Re: use of the uniquely NetBSD _OPENBSD_SOURCE vs something better?

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Thu, May 08, 2025 at 11:54:24AM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> However this special define does impose extra effort to port code to
> specifically to NetBSD, as now strtonum() is more or less "universally"
> available by default.  (I've since seen that it is available by default
> in Solaris (illumos, OmniOS), and of course it's also been in the linux
> "BSD" library, with default visibility, for a very long time now.)
> 
> In any case it seems mostly like politics and bad grudges to require a
> unique special define to expose these functions to code that end users
> are just trying to build.
> 

To be honest it's a long term policy on NetBSD to avoid namespace
pollution, we don't expose our own functions to POSIX applications
either.

libbsd is a random third-party project and not part of any libc.

> I'm going to get laughed at trying to suggest fixes to projects which
> effectively say they have to define "_OPENBSD_SOURCE" just to compile
> stuff on NetBSD when it already works on all the other BSDs!
> 
> 	#if defined(__NetBSD__) && !defined(_OPENBSD_SOURCE)
> 	# define _OPENBSD_SOURCE	1
> 	#endif

This can (and should) be done via the build system or environment
instead.  export CFLAGS="-D_OPENBSD_SOURCE", etc.