Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 11:54:19 +0200 From: Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@scc.nl> To: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: make world issues Message-ID: <38099CCB.99EE1C97@scc.nl> References: <3808BC30.2699465B@scc.nl>, <199910162136.PAA01266@harmony.village.org>
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[taken of -arch] Warner Losh wrote: > Personally, I would have included backward compatibiltiy shims in libc > for the signal stuff for a while, but that appears to have been hard > to do... The problem I have with such a workaround (in general) is that it is difficult (in general) to know when you can remove the shims. Adding the shims is not the real problem. When the shims are there, they are either forgotten or alternatively, removing them starts long-threaded discussions which end up with the shims being kept because the persons in favor of removing them are generally less fanatical than the persons who are against its removal. When the shims are there long enough, no active developer knows why they are there in the first place and also decides to keep them because he/she fears world breakage and/or backward compatibility breakage. In the mean time other shims can be created with the workaround as precedent. Before you know it everybody is using shims without actually knowing why and you end up with a bloated set of libraries that, because of the shims and other compatibility stuff, are hard to maintain and bug-sensitive. Reverting such a situation is always more difficult than preventing it. In short: lot's of speculation :-) -- Marcel Moolenaar mailto:marcel@scc.nl SCC Internetworking & Databases http://www.scc.nl/ The FreeBSD project mailto:marcel@FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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