Subject: Re: Detecting statvfs without autoconf
To: Christoph Kaegi <kgc@zhwin.ch>
From: Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 01/06/2006 17:43:53
On 1/6/06, Quentin Garnier <cube@cubidou.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 04:55:56PM +0100, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> [...]
> > 3) Reading that, you see that the change was not present with 200030000
> >    and went in with 200040000.
> >
> > Which is what I wrote in my original mail.
>
> Except it is not convenient to test for that, as 2.1 is 201000000,
> because of the number dance we did after 2.0 release.  (2.1 doesn't have
> statvfs.)
>
> That's why I think pkgsrc tests after 2.99.9, which was the first
> re-numbered version.  That effectively means support for 2.0D to 2.0H
> was dropped.

And this (all the possible combinations) is why relying on OS names and
versions to detect specific features brings all kinds of problems when
porting an application to a "new" platform (in this case, a new NetBSD
version).

You (the starter of this thread) should really consider using autoconf
(or any other method, in case you hate autoconf) to automatically detect
whether to use statfs or statvfs and how.  The following talk about this
a bit more:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/31/packaging.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/04/28/packaging2.html

Cheers,

--
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>
The Julipedia - http://julipedia.blogspot.com/
The NetBSD Project - http://www.NetBSD.org/