Re: Signal names with autoconf?

[Mark . Burgess]

> Why do you need a table? Ok, I admit, I have not looked at the code for
> the signal stuff, *yet*. but if you need a table, you can just use the
> symbolic name and the #define'd value. "hup" and SIGHUP for example.
> 
> Instead of telling me this is nonsense, correct me. or give me a good
> reason to shut up ;)
> 
> Mike.

The information in the header file does not constitute a variable.

#define SIGKILL 9

replaces the string SIGKILL in any source code with the number 9.
Nothing remains of the name SIGKILL. Only the number 9 can be
obtained from the header file. That means that the name of the signal
in this included file is completely lost to the program.

In order to recognise the strong "sigkill" in cfengine and match it
to a number, we have to associate that name with the correct number.
That means we need to obtain the list.

Now, we can get part way using your idea by making a free list
association in some variables:

SIGS[sigkill] = SIGKILL
SIGS[sigint] = SIGINT

etc. But we can no longer make a table, since 
problem here is that we don't know all of the names
that are defined as signals on the different platforms. There's
a few names which are standard, but also several special ones
which make this difficult.

Perhaps we don't need all of the names in cfengine. I don't
know what people will want to do. Users can just use the signal
number if they want to anyway... One could return an error:

 "cfengine does not recognize this signal name, please use a number"

perhaps to get around this. THe simplest solution is to only
support the most common names that are found on every unix.

M

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