Re: [PATCH] readline: Support libedit.

[Mats Erik Andersson]

onsdag den 16 oktober 2013 klockan 22:08 skrev Ludovic Courtès detta:
> Mats Erik Andersson <address@hidden> skribis:
> 
> > I would like to see the module readline to access also libedit,
> > should libreadline be missing on a particular system. The patch
> > contained here successfully links against libedit on NetBSD and
> > Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Likewise, it still behaves correctly with
> > libreadline on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, DragonFlyBSD, OpenBSD, and
> > OpenSolaris.
> 
> Isn???t libedit supposed to be a clone of Readline just for the sake of
> avoiding the GPL?

No! Debian presently offers libreadline6, libedit2, and libeditline0.
The runtime packages of these are, in the same order, 158 kB, 72 kB,
and 11 kB in size. It is true that libedit originates in NetBSD, but I
do not see the relevance of this fact to gnulib. On the other hand,
DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD bring libreadline by default, so
the argument against GPL seems void in this setting.

The module "readline" (not authored by me) offers a crippled readline(),
which is hardly more than getline() in its abilities, every time it
cannot locate libreadline. I personally find it superior, could that
module access the function readline() in more libraries than the heavy
weight champion libreadline.

My patch is in all essence only improving the m4 script to be better
informed of the alternatives.

I can add, that in the GNU Inetutils project, the module "readline"
is useless precisely of the above reason.

Regards,
  Mats Erik Andersson