Re: How to work around a missing library function?

[Dr. David Kirkby]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 November 2009 13:43:34 Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> > Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 25 November 2009 12:13:56 Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> > > > I'm reluctant to use this code on every OS, as its not my code, and the
> > > >  author might not like that, as this does no error checking. But it
> > > > would be good to implement it when atoll() is not in the library.
> > > check out the gnulib project
> > Thank you Mike, I will do that. I assume that will provide an
> >  implementation for atoll(). But is the rest of my logic ok?
>
> while your logic looked ok, you dont need to worry about it with gnulib.  not 
> only does it provide atoll replacements, but it takes care of the configure 
> tests and enabling it as needed as well.  your source code shouldnt need to 
> change -- it can be written to assume atoll exists.  it's a pretty badass 
> project.
> -mike

A big problem is gnulib is GPL3 - I need to code to be GPL2, so I can not use 
the library.

The second issue is that I am not totally convinced the person who wrote that 
code would appreciate all the dependencies of gnublib.

I've suggested I convert his 'Configure' script to one which uses 
autoconf/automake. I think simplicity is needed here. I can't see him objecting 
to a few lines of C inserted, but the code in gnulib has various dependencies. 
It also calls strtoll() which does not exist, so that too would have to be built.

The author of the code does not use autoconf/automake, but said he would my 
changes as long as he could make changes easily. I'm a bit worried he might just 
prefer his 'Configure' script anyway, which works well for him.

I would like to avoid having m4 macros, and anything else that makes it more 
difficult for someone to understand.