Errors compiling cdrtools under cygwin 1.5.19

Eric Blake ericblake@comcast.net
Tue Jan 24 18:35:00 GMT 2006


> 
> This is what he answered:

Joerg is known to be stubborn.  You should try reading all
his comments on the bug-tar list, where he claims that his
implementation star is hands-down superior to GNU tar.  Just
take it with a grain of salt.

> 
>     Try to convince cygwin to remove their non-conforming interface
>     definition.
> 
>     The getline() iterface I use goes back to 1982 and has been used in
>     a commercial
>     UNIX clone for a long time.

I would remind Joerg that the Austin group is considering standardizing
the GNU getline() interface; and if that is ever standardized, the
older interface will be officially obsoleted.  Meanwhile, getline() is
a non-standard interface; and until either version (the 1982, or
the GNU version) is standardized, cygwin is sticking with the
Linux definition, and that programs that want to be portable
to multiple platforms must be prepared to deal with whatever
definition of getline exists.

> 
> I don't know if cygwin's interface can easily be changed, but 
> considering that Jörg doesn't seem to be willing to modify his code, 
> what do you think that could be done to solve this problem?
> I hope that a solution can be found, because cdrdao and cdrtools are 
> really great software...

The only thing cygwin could do here is to make sure that
the definition of getline is not visible if _POSIX_SOURCE is
defined, since it is an extension to POSIX.  From what I
know about Joerg, he is pretty insistent that his programs
stick to standards, so if he uses _POSIX_SOURCE to protect
himself from inheriting getline from system headers, then it
is cygwin's fault that we do not yet isolate non-standard
interfaces properly.

--
Eric Blake
volunteer cygwin tar maintainer

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