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Re: Building binutils/gcc/glibc -
Paul Eggert <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU> writes:
> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>
>> (I asked for a ./configure option to override the system headers,
>> and was told such a patch would be welcome.)
>
> Yes, I'm sure Jim Meyering would still welcome such a patch.
>
> Also, perhaps glibc should have a configure-time option to specify the
> value of _POSIX2_VERSION in glibc's posix/unistd.h. It'd probably
> simplify Shawn Starr's life if he could lower that #define to
> 199209L
[...]
To reiterate, it is *wrong* to cause the behavior of an application to
change just because the underlying C library asserts support for a new
standard.
The environment variable is not quite so wrong, however, backward
compatibility issues utterly dominate here; we *cannot* stop using
these "old" options, as some systems we support don't allow the "new"
options. Coreutils should silently accept the old options, no matter
what, for at least the next ten years, ideally forever.
zw