[OpenIndiana-discuss] e2fsprogs header file bug

[Andrey N. Oktyabrski]

On 28.10.11 23:11, James Carlson wrote:
>> Perhaps, it is necessary to remove unusable headers from system?
>
> Well, much luck in that.  Years ago at Sun, I filed a bug on it, and I
> had lengthy discussions with some of the senior architects while trying
> to find a way to address it.  I never really did get much agreement on
> the issue.
>
> What I wanted to do was to segregate the documented interfaces (i.e.,
> the things people in other projects _should_ be #including) from the
> undocumented ones (the things they should never #include) via packaging.
>    That is, you'd have a "normal" /usr/include that gets installed, and a
> set of "extra" packages containing /usr/include files that you "should
> not" be using, but that have historically been shipped with the system.
>   It seems like a simple idea, and possibly helpful to keep users on the
> straight-and-narrow, but:
>
>    - Many system headers have a wild mix of documented/public interfaces
>      and undocumented/unusable ones.  You'd have to separate out these
>      bits first into separate files, likely involving tens of thousands
>      of lines of code churn.
>    - At least at Sun, there were hundreds of obscure groups contributing
>      code to ON all the time.  There was simply no feasible way to get
>      all of them to stop contributing unusable bits to /usr/include, so
>      even if you could do this, it'd be a one-off hack.  Eventually, new
>      trash would appear.  There's no way to make it stay fixed.
>    - Some third-party software (unfortunately!) relies on undocumented
>      and only partially usable bits from /usr/include.  Since a lot of
>      people rely on that code, cleansing /usr/include would have little
>      effect -- real users will have to install the "naughty" package
>      containing the "unusable" headers so that they can continue
>      building the software they really want.  If everybody installs
>      that, then the work of separating the bits was wasted.
>
> I also tried removing headers that were utterly without merit, such as
> /usr/include/net/af.h.  That doesn't do anything on Solaris, and never
> did.  You'd be surprised and dismayed how much crapola like that is
> strewn in /usr/include.  I spent months categorizing stuff, removing
> garbage, and rewriting mistaken code throughout the system that actually
> _used_ these _unusable_ headers, but never got to the point of
> integrating the work.  I still have the diffs somewhere if someone wants
> them.
>
> I like cleanliness, so I wouldn't argue against someone making
> improvements here, but I've been beaten down enough myself.  ;-}
Sad story :-( But it is necessary to do something. The circumstances, 
given to themselves, goes from bad to the worst.