Re: #include oddity in v7.0b3

On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Consider X11. The normal procedure is to include via forms like
> <X11/Xlocale.h>. A compiler that doesn't support that may be
> ANSI-compliant. I doubt it will be used much, and certainly not for
> building XEmacs.

The way I see it, the only thing you can reasonably assume is that given
#include <foo> (where "foo" is any string) the compiler will try to
consider a file XXXfoo, for each XXX in the search path for include files
(which is partially hard-coded into the compiler and partially controlled
by setting -I or similar options and may or may not include the current
directory, or the directory the containing file is in). You cannot assume
that "" does anything differently than <>. The difference is cosmetic.

> I'll stipulate that you're right about the specs; it is simply the
> fact that the "detect the path" method is working well for us in other
> cases. This is the first time it has broken for us because the
> assumption that "" would find all recursively included headers
> installed in the same place failed.

I did a quick scan of my system and both practices are used equally
widely, so unless you intend to address all the authors of all the other
packages as well I suggest you give it up.

> We could use the `-I' method, but who knows what other cruft we'll pick
> up on some systems?

Everybody uses the '-I method'. If you have too many -I's all at once I
suggest either not bothering, or modularizing your code.

> Putting in more than 20 `-I's means we cannot guarantee where anything
> will get included from.

If people have duplicatedly named header files in the default search paths
chances are that *anything* that will use them is going to break. There is
no grand-unified work around so people will have to get down to
organizing their system sooner or later.

Just because you guys are constantly trying to subvert autoconf there's no
reason to let it out on us. :-/

Okay, now *why* does XEmacs need PostgreSQL?

--
Peter Eisentraut Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net 75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/ Sweden