Re: getaddrinfo needs socklen, sync from coreutils

[Jim Meyering]

Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> wrote:

> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I've just discovered/fixed a build problem with the getaddrinfo module.
>> It didn't depend on the socklen module (for the declaration of socklen_t).
>> So I've merged these changes from coreutils:
>
> Hm. socklen_t is POSIX.  Shouldn't getaddrinfo assume a POSIX system
> except for getaddrinfo?  If a maintainer notice that socklen_t is ALSO
> missing he could use the socklen_t module herself.

Hi Simon,

I don't understand your suggestion.
Why would you *not* want to make the getaddrinfo module depend on
the socklen one?  configure-time overhead?

The whole idea of gnulib is to provide as consistent a development
environment as possible.  Sometimes that means declaring types, including
replacement header files, defining/linking-to replacement functions, etc.
that are more consistent with our desired environment (often POSIX, but
also with things from the GNU C library).  The goal is that the applications
using gnulib can code to this idealized environment, with a minimum of
kludges, #ifdef's, work-arounds, etc.

The goal of each module should be to insulate the developer from the
vagaries and portability problems of the less-conforming systems we use.
Not having a socklen_t type is one problem that can arise, so any module
that uses that type should depend on the one (socklen) that ensures
the type is declared.

> Just a thought.
> For this case adding the dependency is low-cost, but in general it
> could have been a very complex module that were added.