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Date:      Thu, 8 May 2003 13:20:28 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Daniel Eischen <eischen@pcnet1.pcnet.com>
To:        Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>
Cc:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Re: `Hiding' libc symbols
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.4.10.10305081307010.2068-100000@pcnet1.pcnet.com>
In-Reply-To: <200305081617.h48GHcZT008633@arch20m.dellroad.org>

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On Thu, 8 May 2003, Archie Cobbs wrote:

> Paul Richards wrote:
> > > But gee, the problem is that the ports themselves are not really
> > > in error, unless one is a standards fascist that believes that an
> > > application can never define any function that might be in some
> > > standard's namespace.
> > 
> > Any C code that isn't written according to the standard that defines
> > C is broken.
> > 
> > There's just no argument to be made that FreeBSD should be hacked
> > to support C code that is written by programmers who haven't bothered
> > to learn the rules of C properly.
> 
> Agreed... and even if you *do* believe FreeBSD should accomodate
> such broken applications, the place to put the hack is in the port,
> not in the base system.

I don't see it as a hack; I see it as cleaning up our library
and removing loose ends.  We are a vendor and we should provide
a libc that is internally consistent regardless of what an
application does (to the extent that we can).  We already
have weak symbols in libc, all the syscalls are that way, plus
some others.  Someone makes strlcpy and strlcat weak symbols,
something that NetBSD already does, and we have an endless
thread on it???  (Sorry to add to it).

If applications really want to override our use of standard
functions within libc, then they can still do that.  And
there are very few ports that really need to do this.
It's not rocket science trying to figure out what the
actual symbols are -- nm will most likely give you what
you want.

At any rate, can we please put this thread to rest until
Jacques comes back from vacation?  It doesn't make sense
arguing about it when the main proponent of it is not
here.

-- 
Dan Eischen



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