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FreeBSD port utmp plan
- From: Roland McGrath <roland at redhat dot com>
- To: Bruno Haible <bruno at clisp dot org>
- Cc: libc-alpha at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 20:09:08 -0700
- Subject: FreeBSD port utmp plan
> + Next, decide about the utmp implementation. There are two choices:
> + utmp-compat Lets glibc use the same format for utmp and wtmp as FreeBSD
> + libc. Recommended if you want to use glibc and FreeBSD libc
> + on the same system.
> + Configure option: --enable-compatible-utmp
> + utmp-utmpx Lets glibc use the extended utmpx format for utmp and wtmp.
> + This provides for better Linux source code compatibility.
> + Configure option: --disable-compatible-utmp
> + The default is --enable-compatible-utmp.
It's not acceptable to have a configure switch like this that affects the
API/ABI. The platform is the platform. The utmp code is already
structured with a dispatch table that makes it reasonably easy to support
multiple file formats, which is the real goal. Wouldn't it be better to
use the Linux-style formats in the API and just have file-format
compatibility? Can detect which format the existing file is in, or be
controlled in some other way for what format to write in?