Re: Fixing -pthreads (Re: ports and -current)

On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 10:35:10PM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> Daniel Eischen wrote:
> >This is about 3rd party applications built outside of
> >ports.  The only possible problem you are going to
> >have is on the link command, and it should be obvious
> >that you're missing a link to the threads library.
> >This is trivial to fix.  It's not like we're making
> >someone change their code to accomodate library or
> >kernel interface changes.
> >
> 
> This is exactly the case the is going to cause the problems, though.
> For you, compiling a 3rd party app and dealing with failures in the
> linker is easy to deal with.  For someone else, it might not be.  If
> they go to compile an app and it compiles and runs fine on linux but
> fails on FreeBSD with linker errors, it will likely leave a negative
> impression in their mind.
> 
> I'm comparing my arguments to linux because a lot more apps are written
> with linux in mind than with solaris in mind these days.  People who are
> writing for linux or switching from linux might not know that
> '-lpthread' is a requirement, but they are more likely to know that
> '-pthread' will take care of all of that magic for them.  This argument
> really comes down to ease of use and user experience.  Steering away
> from de-facto standards steers us away from a positive user and
> developer experience.
> 

If the behavior of -pthread is documented in the man pages,
then your argument holds no water.  If the link stage fails,
one would hope that the user can read the documention.

-- 
Steve