Re: [bug #61315] Several groff source files don't include <config.h> first

[Paul Eggert]

On 10/9/21 1:33 PM, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> if a function exists, replacing it with something else is an outrage.

It's an outrage only if one already subscribes to the theory that it's 
an outrage.

If GNU apps were not allowed to replace broken system functions, every 
GNU app would have do its own porting, and this would be significantly 
more work overall. For example, each individual GNU app would have to 
work around each individual snprintf portability problem itself, either 
by avoiding snprintf, or by avoiding snprintf features like "%zt" or 
"%$2s" or printing infinity or all the other snprintf things that go 
wrong on various platforms. And sprintf is just one library function; 
there are hundreds of others to deal with. Such an approach would be a 
significantly worse porting hassle than Gnulib already is.

There are other ways to port besides Gnulib. There's the way that 
OpenSSH does it, for example: it has a core project written for OpenBSD 
only, and a separate project that maintains OpenSSH ports. 
Unfortunately, this entails about 127,000 lines of differences in a 
121,000-line project (I used 'diff -rNwU0 ssh openssh-8.8p1 | wc' to 
measure). Although such an approach evidently works well enough for 
OpenSSH, it doesn't scale well to larger systems like GNU.


> When you maintain a significant amount of ported software (say, a few
> thousand different packages), then the only sustainable way to cope with
> the gnulib stuff is to globally switch most of it off:

That's not what most organizations do, organizations that deal with many 
more packages that OpenBSD does. These other organizations are 
sustaining themselves quite well. So I don't agree with the assertion 
that the OpenBSD way is the only sustainable way.

Despite all the problems you encountered with Gnulib, I don't recall 
seeing bug reports from you on bug-gnulib@gnu.org. That's unfortunate, 
as unreported bugs are less likely to be fixed. At some point if you 
have the time you might try reporting a bug or two to 
bug-gnulib@gnu.org, and see whether the problems get fixed. Doing so 
might suggest a better way for OpenBSD and GNU to cooperate.


PS. Werner, I hope I haven't bored you with this long email. I preferred 
writing it to all the stuff I really should be doing....