Re: timeout command

[Eric Blake]

Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com> writes:


> BTW why does gnulib require "program_name" to be exported?

The error module uses 'extern char * program_name'; this is provided by default 
in glibc (via the name program_invocation_name, which is exported as part of 
glibc), but for the rest of the world, it needs external linkage.  Gnulib 
provides the progname module to provide this, but intentionally omits this 
package as a dependency of the error module for the sake of packages that 
manually provide it (such as coreutils).

I suppose coreutils could change to use the progname module, 
#include "progname.h" in system.h, and change existing instances 
of 'program_name = argv[0]' to 'set_program_name (argv[0])'; this would obviate 
the need to declare program_name in each application.

Hmm - progname.h claims that program_name is const char *, but error.c uses it 
only as char *.  I wonder if we should worry about that at all?

> Should this be a syntax-check?

My question, exactly :)

-- 
Eric Blake