Re: FreeBSD 4.0

[Jeffrey A Law <law@cygnus.com>]

  In message < 37E00F41.AF49518@datadesign.com >you write:
  > First off, I am strongly in the camp that says the fewer headers
  > that get secreted off some place the better.  In other words,
  > if the standard BSD compiler is GCC, then the standard BSD headers
  > should be compatible with it.
But, unfortunately, header requirements change over time.  This is precisely
the problem we have had with the *BSD* systems over the years.

Back in 1991 or so I put in a change which made GCC avoid installing its 
own internal header files for "Net-2" systems (upon which all the *BSD variants
are derived.

That turned out to be a huge, unbelievably stupid, thing to do.  Why?  Because
when we needed to provide a magic symbol (I believe in stddef.h) to ensure
that C++ adhered to the proper definition of NULL the *BSD systems did not
get that definition.

Or another example would be the need to massage math.h because it had
"struct exception" in it and "exception" became a reserved word for C++.
 


  > >From the perspective that the future will be compatible,
That is not an assumption we can safely make because the requirements do
change over time and GCC needs to continue to work when those requirements
change.

  > The most straght forward answer is:  do that which has the smallest
  > impact while still being certain to not break other implementations.
I certainly agree with this.  However, it has to include installation of the
GCC header files, now and in the future.

jeff