Cross-Porting Software: Difference between revisions

The GNU portability layer takes the form of a collection of files that everyone copies into their packages and then neglect to update often. These files are often deeply integrated into the package (i.e. hard to disable properly). The principle of replacing standard library functions if broken or missing is not too terribly bad - but Gnulib mixes it with a huge paranoia that the host system is terribly broken and assumes the very worst when cross-compiling. The result is that when you cross-compile these ports, huge amounts of compatibility code gets compiled in, and much of this compatibility code does not even work on unknown platforms. Of particular fun is code that needs to integrate deeply into stdio internals or when it replaces your printf. The result is that as you port packages, you often find yourself fixing the same gnulib code over and over (each time subtly different depending on when it was forked). When you improve your stdio implementation to be more standards-compliant, you find yourself needing to fix all those gnulib stdio-internals-aware files all over again, because some silly internal changed.