-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Tue, 13 May 2008, John Calcote wrote: >> But this is very common mistake. It comes from carelessness about which >> header files are considered part of the public interface, and which ones >> should be kept private. The generated config.h header file is intended >> to help BUILD the library on a particular platform, not provide support >> for consumers of the library through the public interface of that >> library. And yet I see this happen all the time. > > It is sometimes necessary to provide build-specific typedefs and defines > in order for the installed header files to correctly represent the > library interface. If "config.h" is not used, then a more elaborate > means needs to be used to make this possible. > > For my own project, I use two "config.h" files. One is used to build > the software and the other is trimmed down to support only what is > actually needed to define the interface header ABI. And what if a user decided to run "make install" to put your public headers into his or her /usr/local/include directory? Or even worse--what if a distro packager decides to provide a "devel" package for your project that installs your public headers into "/usr/include"? How is it that you're okay claiming ownership of the one "config.h" header that is allowed to exist in this directory? My point is simple: config.h should NEVER be included in a library's public interface. NEVER. It always causes such problems, and if you find you need to do it for one reason or another, then you should re-examine your design for the flaws that you will inevitably find there, if you look hard enough. A portable public interface does not need to contain platform-specific details of any sort. There are always ways to avoid this. Regards, John -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIKd16dcgqmRY/OH8RAsdvAKCIhgPOYfNUN4QkryO0IMW6h6VinQCfdAa5 bR/Iy6D4cYZkTDQc5WkNv7Q= =U95M -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
