Re: argp spec

[Miles Bader]

Keith Simmons <address@hidden> writes:
> In your earlier message, you mentioned that some folks at GNU were
> interested in making a standalone, portable version of argp.  Do you
> think there is any interest in argp ported to solaris?

I think it's already been ported to Solaris by the `lsh' project,
though those changes haven't been merged back into glibc.

There was some talk of making a standalone library a while back, but
nothing's really come of it.  Maybe your work can provide some impetus.

> Members of my group were debating whether it would be useful to submit
> or would just be considered clutter.

It would definitely be useful to at least see the changes.

What sources did you use as a base (I presume glibc, but it would help
to know the exact version)?  Doing a diff should pinpoint the various
portability problems you ran into.

> I think the solaris port I made is probably portable to other systems,
> since it primarily relies on standard ISO C function.  However, it
> does rely somewhat on the new ISO C 99 standard, and I have not
> actually tested it on any other systems.

Right.  For a truly portable version, of course, we can't do this; we'd
have to use autoconf, etc.

> Also, to make it portable, I primarily just removed GNU extensions
> which were there for optimization (you actually did most of the work
> to make it truly portable).  You may prefer to make a portable version
> where non of the optimizations are removed. All this being said, let
> me know if you think it should be submitted.

My thought is that the best thing to do is something similar to the way
the GNU glob code is handled -- keep the standard sources in glibc, but
add more autoconf stuff so that with an appropriate makefile etc. a
standalone distribution can be made.

This may be harder than I imagine, of course...

-Miles
-- 
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