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

From: Scott Long <scottl_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 23:23:01 -0600
Steve Kargl wrote:
> 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.
> 

Many, many, many things that are documented in the man pages still
generate questions and frustration.  Adding an extra learning step
is not the best way to make the OS more usable.

Scott
Received on Mon Sep 22 2003 - 20:23:33 UTC

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