Re: #include oddity in v7.0b3 - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

Peter Eisentraut <e99re41@DoCS.UU.SE> wrote:

> You cannot assume that "" does anything differently than <>. The difference
> is cosmetic.

        Really, I'd like you to point me to one known C preprocessor that does
not make the difference. Standards are a good thing, but they are not
immutable, and the evolution leans towards this semantic difference between ""
and <>. It's already explicit in C++ for instance. If 99% of the preprocessors
of the planet work a certain way, I don't see anything wrong in following a
de-facto convention, and I'd encourage people to conform to it, in view to a
very probable standardization. That's exactly what happened in this particular
case.

> 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.

        That's indeed the two attitudes one can adopt. Either you do your on
personal little cruft alone in your corner, or you try to talk with people. We
usually try to "address the authors of the packages we interact with". This
policy is IMHO of a better citizenship.

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

        Please, don't you think we already have modularized code ? We're not
trying to find a solution to our problem here. We're trying to find the
*cleanest* solution for *everybody*. Why don't you want to understand that ?
Without any modification on your part, we know how to fix the problem in at
least 3 different manners. But that's just not the point.

        Let me rephrase what I originally wanted to underline:

- Joe provides a library libfoo.
- Joe provides a header libfoo.h, located at /usr/include/libfoo/libfoo.h in
  order to use the library.

Now if this program:

| #include <libfoo/libfoo.h>
| main () {}

can't compile, then, I consider that the installation of the library is
broken, and instead of writing yet another trick in my code, I say to myself
"OK I should tell Joe about this.". What's wrong with that ?! Given that Tom
actually seems to agree with this, and given the answer of the Andres Kardos'
answer, I don't understand your attitude here.

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

        *subvert* autoconf ?! We're using autoconf exactly in the way it is
done for: to make the life of our users better.

> Okay, now *why* does XEmacs need PostgreSQL?

        XEmacs doesn't need postgresql. It nows supports it, which means
people can write Emacs Lisp packages interfacing with postgres databases, and
benefit from the XEmacs editing features and environment.

--
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