Re: argp: Correct documentation

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
   > Does a system become a `glibc platform' if one uses gnulib?

   No, it doesn't, because
     - the term 'platform' or 'system' denotes the basic OS + base libraries,
     - Gnulib does not emcompass glibc.

Ok, so you agree that there is no such thing as a "glibc platform",
seeing that glibc is not "basic OS + base libraries".  So it makes
sense to not use that term.  I suspect that you find it clear since
you came up with it, to others it is not as clear.

   > I could not find this decision in those two references, both are pages
   > from Debian, and nothing from RMS on the topic.

   You can trust my memory on this statement, even though I can't find
   the precise mail where RMS announced this decision. It was probably
   in 2001.

It has little to do with trust, if there is such an "announcment" it
would be useful to put it up on gnu.org.  I do not recall any such
thing from RMS having been announced around that time, or at all.

   >      - Is Alpine Linux a GNU system? (It uses musl libc instead of glibc.) 
[4]
   > 
   > No, Alpine is not based on the GNU system ...
   > 
   >      - Is Windows with WSL and a GNU distro a GNU system? [5][6]
   > 
   > Windows is the operating system here, that is what your computer is
   > running.  Just becaues you run another operating system inside an
   > existing one, doesn't mean that one becomes the other.  

   While you can answer these questions (and I agree with the answers), the mere
   fact that these questions appear on reddit shows that the term "GNU system"
   is not as unambiguous as one might wish.

What reddit, or some other nasty fourm shows does not make something
ambiguous.  What matters is the GNU project, and what we say.  Seeing
that you yourself could answer these two questions, we can agree that
there is little ambigiousity in what constitutes the GNU system.

Overall, the GNU system is not "based on the 'glibc platfrom'", and
lets avoid using that term.  We have far clearer ones, like the 'GNU
system' to use that has wide acceptance in the GNU project, but also
outside.


The text over all is messy on other points as well:

   Portability problems fixed by Gnulib:
   @itemize
  +@item
  +This variable is missing on all non-glibc platforms:
  +macOS 11.1, FreeBSD 13.0, NetBSD 9.0, OpenBSD 6.7, Minix 3.1.8, AIX 5.1, 
HP-UX 11, IRIX 6.5, Solaris 11.4, Cygwin 2.9, mingw, MSVC 14, Android 9.0.
  
  ...

Does this mean that FreeBSD 12 supports it?  What amount Minix 2?  Are
these "all" the platforms, seeing that it is an exhaustive list in
detail.  Will one list other obscure non-free platforms?  We avoid
mentioning them out of principle, since we do not want to promote
them.  Why isn't freedos listed?  Is this list manually updated each,
and every time those companies or projects make a release? That seems
like useless churn.  Etc ....