From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 22998 invoked by alias); 4 Feb 2006 06:29:30 -0000 Received: (qmail 22989 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Feb 2006 06:29:29 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (HELO zproxy.gmail.com) (64.233.162.196) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sat, 04 Feb 2006 06:29:28 +0000 Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id x3so755582nzd for ; Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:29:26 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.36.222.39 with SMTP id u39mr1128798nzg; Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:29:26 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.37.2.63 with HTTP; Fri, 3 Feb 2006 22:29:26 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <8f2776cb0602032229i5a55962eq948eeec5fcd5b4c0@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 06:29:00 -0000 From: Jim Blandy To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org Subject: Re: RFA: Support Windows extended error numbers in safe_strerror In-Reply-To: <20060204032730.GB9890@nevyn.them.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060203215455.GA3501@nevyn.them.org> <200602032325.k13NPJ6g028001@elgar.sibelius.xs4all.nl> <20060203233935.GA13238@trixie.casa.cgf.cx> <20060204032730.GB9890@nevyn.them.org> X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2006-02/txt/msg00058.txt.bz2 On 2/3/06, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote: > I'm sorry a lot of you find the changes either morally or aesthetically > objectionable. I'm not entirely sure which it is. When I worked on Emacs from 1990, that was before the autoconf era, and the code was covered with #ifdef blocks for various architectures and operating systems. I found them extremely irritating to work with, since it took careful examination to figure out exactly what invariants each branch of the #if expected from the surrounding code.=20 It didn't help that I didn't usually have documentation handy for whatever OS-specific bits that #if branch was trying to use. So I find that kind of thing confusing, and it slows me down. I don't expect that everyone has my limitations, but I don't think they're so rare, either. A macro that takes documented arguments and is expected not to randomly refer to stuff from its context is a big improvement for me.