Re: Issues with progname

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/18/2016 09:08 AM, Pino Toscano wrote:
> progname is GPL 3+, which means it cannot be used in the main library
> (which is LGPL 2) without changing the license of the resulting work.

I expect this is because it was intended to be used only by programs, 
not by libraries, so GPL was appropriate. If we come up with something 
that can also be used by libraries, LGPL would be appropriate.

> At least on FreeBSD, there is a getprogname() library function which
> provides what is needed, but cannot be used in a static initializer
> (while the "program_name" to provide must be like that).
>
> My idea would be something like the following:
> a) change all the program_name usages into call of some internal
>     function, e.g. gl_get_program_name()

How about if we use the BSD API instead?  It looks reasonable and is 
designed to be portable. On BSD our module would do nothing since BSD 
already does what we want.