Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 19:02:56 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: cracauer@cons.org (Martin Cracauer) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, cracauer@cons.org, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Standardizing a BSD/ELF ABI... Message-ID: <199809081902.MAA05059@usr07.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19980908172807.A12626@cons.org> from "Martin Cracauer" at Sep 8, 98 05:28:07 pm
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> That's all? I'm afraid I have to rate that as lame :-) I did say "technically"... > You are using data from a library or provide data to a library that is > not specified in the interface. The old libtermcap used to require exactly this for lines, columns, and I-forget-what-character-array. The use of sys_errlist directly (allowed unde POSIX) instead of using strerror(3) falls into this category, and counts as a break between versions of RedHat releases, as do a number of libvga accesses. > It could have been declared in an interface file with a certain size, > in that case, you wouldn't be able to compile the pieces of code that > don't fit together. It wasn't, and in any case, the dynamic linker would have to examine the difference, since it would be between shared library revisions. > Or you declare a pointer only, in that case you > can't make any assumptions about the size, all you can do is to call a > function in the same unit the data has been declared in, which knows > the real size. So no problem either way as long as you strickly > implement and obey to the published interfaces. You are assuming that the people writing this code are professional programmers (who are paid to due grunt work), as opposed to students. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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