Per Bothner wrote: > Casey Marshall wrote: >> We have the responsibility, as contributors to a GNU project, to >> maintain the project for the GNU system. GNU is sorta-POSIX, as are a >> lot of other interesting platforms, and targeting them earns us, as >> free software contributors -- not necessarily other groups or >> companies that want to use Classpath -- a lot. I see these "native >> portability layers" as being counter to that goal, and they >> especially don't make sense given that there's no other free >> implementations for platforms other than what we are targeting. > > An alternative take with similar conclusion: There is a standard > "native portability layer". It is called Posix. There are multiple > implementations of this layer available for MS-Windows. Other platforms > we are likely to support (such as OS-X) already support Posix. I.e. > there is no need for an extra portability layer. Exactly my sentiments (as a bystander in this thread so far)!!!! The parts of POSIX that Classpath uses are pretty much exactly those parts that Classpath needs. So why not just implement that subset of POSIX on your obscure platform? As a side-benefit, lots of other stuff might compile and work on your platform then too. Another thing that bugs me is that it's extra work to create a new 'layer' for each platform. Instead, the autoconf system is much more efficient: once you implement a test for whatever non-POSIX thing, that test can work for all platforms that need it, now and in the future. The "layer" idea is too big a level of granularity to be porting at. We should be porting more like at the function call and macro level. </rant> -Archie __________________________________________________________________________ Archie Cobbs * CTO, Awarix * http://www.awarix.com
