Re: [musl] __MUSL__ macro

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 04:34:37PM +0100, Alastair Houghton wrote:
> On 7 Jul 2023, at 16:19, Markus Wichmann <nullplan@gmx.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, it makes people write worse code. Not making the macros available
> > makes people write more portable code, which is a good thing.
> 
> The people who would have misused the macros will simply find
> another way to detect musl that you’ll like even less (look at the
> Stack Overflow post we both mentioned; it’s literally the top
> answer).

The difference is whose fault it is, and who users blame, when they
do.

If we make a macro that says "you can now rely on implementation
details of musl version x.y.z" and people do that, then it ceases to
work in a future version, it's our fault, and people rightly blame us.

If people do stupid hacks explicitly against our warnings, and against
the specification for the interfaces they're using, and it breaks,
it's clearly their fault.

We have a really good history of being consistent on this, and as a
result, of users and projects taking us seriously and making efforts
to improve the overall ecosystem. Throwing that away would be really
counterproductive.

Rich