Re: [musl] strptime_l implementation

[Markus Wichmann <nullplan@gmx.net>]

On Thu, Sep 08, 2022 at 05:36:34AM +1000, Javier Steinaker wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> The Haiku project (an alternative OS) switched to using musl a few weeks
> ago. Now I'm only an occasional contributor, but I hit an use case where
> having strptime_l would be desired/useful (parsing web cookies, which are
> always in english, independently of the locale selected by the user). Since
> nl_langinfo_l is already in place, I figured out it wouldn't be so
> difficult to move the current code to an internal function, and then have
> strptime and strptime_l getting the locale from the system in the first
> case and as an argument in the second, and call that code.
>
> My question is: do you have plans to have strptime_l implemented? Would you
> be interested in merging if someone does? Would it break the ABI or
> something? I'm asking because it made more sense to me to do this upstream
> and then don't having to maintain a separate version if it was useful here.
> Otherwise, we will just find our way in the Haiku code, via implementing
> strptime_l or with another solution.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Javier

Standard requirements for inclusion are absolutely any kind of
standardization effort or agreement among libcs. Otherwise we run the
risk that later on, a different version is standardized, and then we
cannot change our version without breaking ABI.

No, at this point, adding strptime_l would not break ABI, but if we had
to change the interface later on, then it would. So better to only add
it once everything is coordinated. And if I search for the proposed name
of the function, I find a manpage for Illumos, one for Gnulib, and one
at mkssoftware.com. That last one claims that strptime_l() is conformant
to POSIX, but I failed to find it in POSIX, so I think that claim is
wrong.

So basically, that is one necessary condition I do not find fulfilled
here.

Ciao,
Markus