Building binutils/gcc/glibc -

[Paul Eggert]

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,
as this would cause builds of "head", "tail", etc. to support the old
semantics by default.  glibc itself is not responsible for the
utilities on GNU systems, and _POSIX2_VERSION=199209L is more apropos
for some (most?) GNU systems today.


dank@kegel.com writes:

> The coreutils people interpret this to mean that
> head and tail are not allowed to accept the old option:

Yes, the 2001 edition of POSIX forbids most standard utilities to
accept multidigit options (even as extensions!).  This is an
incompatible change to POSIX, and is why the _POSIX2_VERSION
environment variable was added to coreutils.  As Paul Jarc wrote, the
default is the old behavior, but sometimes the new behavior gets
selected by somebody unexpectedly.  See the thread rooted at
<http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2003-09/msg00082.html>
for more about this messy situation.