On Saturday 17 January 2009 15:24:36 Bruno Haible wrote: > Mike Frysinger wrote on 2009-01-04: > > a bunch of modules were labeled as obsolete recently, but no information > > was included explaining why. > > They were marked obsolete because the problems that they fix don't occur > any more on the platform that are reasonable porting targets now. In other > words, the doc/posix-functions/$FUNC.texi file does not list a problem.
i know why the modules are marked obsolete because i spent time googling around and reading threads ... it was more a rhetorical statement to highlight that the current situation is confusing and real info is not readily available to the consumers of gnulib. > > perhaps the toplevel NEWS should be updated > > Why? It's not an incompatible change when a module becomes obsolete. You > can continue to use it. if a tool has something marked as "obsolete" and throws up a warning, then it means that the code being warned about needs to change in someway. otherwise the tool shouldnt be throwing a warning in the first place. > > as well > > as the "Notice" section of each module pointing people to the place for > > more information and/or just telling them why right there ... > > The "more information" is the documentation. For example, for 'memchr': > > Gnulib module: memchr > > Portability problems fixed by Gnulib: > @itemize > @item > This function is missing on some older platforms. > @end itemize none of this indicates why the module is marked obsolete. if anything, it makes it seem like the module shouldnt be obsolete at all. after all, the documentation states that not all platforms have this function and that's the point of gnulib in the first place: to make sure modules of code are always available to the project using gnulib. > What extra information would you find useful here? the simple explanation you posted in your e-mail should be in the documentation. and the modules file should point people to that section of the documentation so that it shows up in the warning when they run the gnulib- tool. -mike
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