Re: Removing sys/sysmacros.h from sys/types.h

[Michael Forney <mforney@mforney.org>]

On 2019-06-14, Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 01:20:21PM -0700, Benjamin Wright wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Would it be possible to remove the sys/sysmacros.h include from
>> sys/types.h?
>>
>> This change was added in 2011 -
>> https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/include/sys/types.h?id=f552c792c7ce5a560f214e1104d93ee5b0833967
>>
>> However it appears to have been removed from other standard libc
>> implementations around ~2015 based on this announcement:
>> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2015-11/msg00253.html
>>
>> This can cause issues with user defined symbol collision of the symbols
>> major, minor or makedev.
>
> Yes, I'd actually forgotten we did this. I'll remove it right away in
> time for the next release.

I'm just curious if there is a good way to use these macros in
software that is otherwise portable without adding a configure script.
Most BSDs don't have sys/sysmacros.h, and now glibc and musl require
including sys/sysmacros.h to use them.

It's a shame that while these macros are available on most unix-like
operating systems, they can't be accessed in a generic way.