Re: gdb 6.7.1 hppa64-hp-hpux11.11 "needs" _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED for various errors

Joel Brobecker
2009-02-23T02:55:38Z

Jay,

It looks like you're on your way to send a collection of patches,
which is great :). However, do you have a copyright assignment
on file with the FSF? For a couple of small changes, we can accept
them under the "Small change" / "obvious" rule, but past this,
it is much better for you to have a copyright assignement.

Your email address has a domain name of a university, so I have to
direct your attention to ownership of the changes you are making
if you are using the university's equipment to make the changes
you are submitting. I think it's relatively uncommon for someone
to have a pa-hpux machine at home (considering the size and price
of these things). Anyway, sometimes, universities claim ownership
of all work done using their equipment, so it becomes harder to
submit them for inclusion in the FSF tree. I see that Cornell University
has a copyright assignment for emacs, so the same might be needed for
GDB. While you're at it, why not ask them if they would be willing to
actually assign all changes for any GNU project?

If you would like to start the process for getting your assignment
filed with the FSF, please contact me privately, and I will be happy
to get you started. This takes a little while, but do check with
your university.

Can I also ask you to have a look at the file gdb/CONTRIBUTE that
explains a bit how to submit patches? For isntance, I noticed that
your patches did not include a ChangeLog entry.

In case of the problem at hand, I am afraid that your patch is not
the best way of handling the problem. As a first measure, I think
it's better to build with CFLAGS='-D_XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED' when
you call "make". I don't know much about this macro, and what its
meaning is, I will double-check when I have a moment, but I wonder
for instance if this macro should be defined if the HP/UX C compiler
was used instead of GCC. Knowing more about this macro will allow us
to implement a change in GDB's configure script that would allow
a developer to build GDB without requiring this manual step.

--
Joel