Hello Zack, On Sun, 14 Mar 2021 at 22:40, Zack Weinberg <zackw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 12:04 PM Alejandro Colomar via Libc-alpha > <libc-alpha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > The manual pages are already inconsistent in which headers need > > to be included. Right now, not all of the types used by a > > function have their required header included in the SYNOPSIS. > > > > If we were to add the headers required by all of the types used by > > functions, the SYNOPSIS would grow too much. Not only it would > > grow too much, but the information there would be less precise. > > > > Having system_data_types(7) document each type with all the > > information about required includes is much more precise, and the > > info is centralized so that it's much easier to maintain. > > > > So let's document only the include required for the function > > prototype, and also the ones required for the macros needed to > > call the function. > > I endorse this change. I agree. Do you want to add an "Acked-by:"? Thanks, Michael > For glibc, if the header file containing the > function prototype doesn't also provide everything you need to call > the function, it's a bug (except for a few cases where the relevant > standards prevent us from doing this, e.g. a function that calls > vprintf will need the macros in <stdarg.h>, but the C standard > specifically forbids <stdio.h> to include <stdarg.h>). > > > <sys/types.h> only defines types, not functions or constants, so > > it doesn't belong to man[23] (function) pages at all. > > I ignore if some old systems had headers that required you to > > include <sys/types.h> *before* them (incomplete headers), > > Such systems did exist in the past, but they are too old to worry > about nowadays. I don't think it's possible for them to be compliant > with POSIX.1-1995, and the examples I know of personally (SunOS 4, for > instance) were not even fully compliant with C89. -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
