Re: TODO additions

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Well, it's not true unless, for instance, you consider the diffs in
>     the current Debian source package to constitute a `funny version'.
> 
> It is a nonstandard version.  Perhaps some of their patches
> ought to be installed in Emacs--we would have to judge them one by one.

The question was about libc for Linux, not about Emacs on Debian.

[Actually I think the basic Debian Emacs patches are both unnecessary
and annoying (he says, typing at such an Emacs).]

>       It would help if all
>     the macros which have an effect in the source were documented
>     AC_DEFINE or AH_TEMPLATE doc strings in configure.in.
> 
> The lists in configure.in would be painfully long,

Just one line per option (unless the description is longer than a
line).  That's surely no longer than the info would be if the
template.h files had been kept up-to-date concerning all the flags.

> and we would want
> to move them into separate files--which is where they are now.

I don't know what you mean.  The information I'm talking about is just
missing.

> The inheritance chains of *.h files are often long.  Perhaps it would
> simplify matters in some situations to eliminate some of the inheritance
> by making some of the files self-contained.

That would be better.  It's not just a question of simplification.
Things down the chain typically break systems higher up, as usg5-4.h
did, when they specify things that are not true for more recent or
more specific systems.