Re: [musl] [PATCH] memmem.3: Added list of known systems where this is available

[Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5153 bytes --]

Hi!

On 11/30/22 20:39, enh wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 7:33 AM Shiz <hi@shiz.me <mailto:hi@shiz.me>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi there,
> 
>      > On 23 Nov Reiwa 4, at 14:16, Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com
>     <mailto:alx.manpages@gmail.com>> wrote:
>      >
>      >>>> -  Android is not a real Unix system, in that you can't even program
>     in C in
>      >>>> there, unless you're Google or have hacked your system.  It's not friendly
>      >>>> to us programmers, so we don't need to be friendly to it.  I don't want to
>      >>>> be cluttering the pages with information that is irrelevant to normal
>     users.
>      >>>
>      >>> I'm assuming bionic is being used in some of the Android free
>      >>> alternatives too, but then I'm not sure how usable for programming those
>      >>> are either. And, well musl libc is not a real Unix system you can program
>      >>> against either. :)
>      >
>      > The difference is only that bionic is not in use in useful systems
>     (AFAIK).  :)
>      >
>      > So we have to do some decission here (and also about newlib, as reported
>     by Brian).
> 
>     I’d like to chime in here and note that, valuations of usefulness aside, it *is*
>     possible to develop in C against an Android device, without needing any hacks,
>     using the NDK[1]. As someone who has occasionally worked on big codebases
>     written
>     in C and C++ for Android devices, I would argue there’s value to be had
>     there. :-)
> 
> 
> plus i think bionic is the only libc that explicitly links to man7.org 
> <http://man7.org> as the canonical source for documentation in its header files :-)

:-)

> 
> funnily enough, this topic ("should the man pages talk about availability in 
> libcs other than glibc?") came up before, and specifically for bionic mkerrisk 
> seemed to think it was a reasonable idea ...

I agree with Michael.

> but i (bionic maintainer) was less 
> convinced. although i think that, yes, if someone's reading that part of the 
> page, realistically they're either interested in macOS/iOS or Android (sorry, 
> AIX or IRIX fans!),

yep.

> but specifically for those two systems the header files 
> already contain machine-readable availability information via 
> __attribute__((__available__)).
> 
> fwiw, here's an example from bionic's <unistd.h> illustrating both of those points:
> 
> ```
> /**
>   * 
> [copy_file_range(2)](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/copy_file_range.2.html <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/copy_file_range.2.html>) copies
>   * a range of data from one file descriptor to another.
>   *
>   * Returns the number of bytes copied on success, and returns -1 and sets `errno`
>   * on failure.
>   *
>   * Available since API level 34.
>   */
> ssize_t copy_file_range(int __fd_in, off64_t* __off_in, int __fd_out, off64_t* 
> __off_out, size_t __length, unsigned int __flags) __INTRODUCED_IN(34);
> ```
> 
> (if there's anything android-specific to note, we also mention that, but there 
> are relatively few examples of those, and it's mostly just "SELinux means that 
> only system processes can enable/disable swap" or whatever.)
> 
> so it wasn't clear to me whether -- unless you automated it -- there was much 
> value to duplicating that in the man pages? if you try to compile, you're going 
> to get a clear compiler error saying "you need to be targeting OS version 
> $whatever" anyway.
> 
> i think the real question is "aye, but will they get that far?". for my part, i 
> think the most value would come from cases that talk about "GNU extension" being 
> a bit clearer whether that's "unique to glibc" (which a lot of people assume is 
> what it means) or "initially in glibc, but a good enough idea that it's 
> effectively ubiquitous now, even if it's not in POSIX because Solaris will never 
> add it". and maybe the best way to clarify stuff like that is just to explicitly 
> state "Available on macOS since 10.4. Available on Android since API level 23."? 
> dunno.
> 
> if anyone _does_ want to go that route, i'd be happy to help with the "raw data" 
> side. (and certainly if anyone does start adding that, you'll force me to care 
> about maintaining it :-) )

I don't "want", as in, doing a global dump of data into the pages.  I have 
better things in which to spend my time.  However, if someone sends a patch for 
one or another page, I'll accept it with the following requirements:  It 
references a free software libc.  So for example, macOS no, Apple libc yes.

> 
> but my biggest problem right now is that man7.org <http://man7.org> isn't being 
> updated, and i can't get hold of mkerrisk to try to offer him money to do it :-( 

I talked to him some months ago.  The last times, he was always very busy.  Good 
luck contacting him!  I still hope he will reappear some day...

If I see him again, I'll mention this offer to him.

> (i do hope he's okay, wherever he is!)

I hope he is!


Cheers,

Alex

-- 
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]