Re: [meanwhile way off-topic] Re: Filesize limitation
Ulrich Drepper (drepper@ipd.info.uni-karlsruhe.de)
06 Nov 1997 19:48:39 +0100
kris@koehntopp.de wrote:
> > You mean change off_t to long long, so it is 64-bit? Is that
> > posix-compliant?
>
> Don't know. If it isn't, POSIX is junk (perhaps fixable junk,
> but still junk).
> [...]
>
> > Just how many files bigger than 2gb do you have, anyway? We should break
> > the vast majority of portable, pd or gpl C code for that vast number of
> > users that use files bigger than 2gb?
>
> Yes, we should. Like we broke most portable, pd or gpl code
> when we made sizeof(int) != sizeof(void*) on 64 bit
> architectures. Did make a lot of trouble when OSF/1 and the
> alpha were introduced, but did a whole lot of good things to
> code quality.
Before you think you have to answer a mail like this you should try to
inform yourself.
The approach to support fiels >2GB does not break POSIX compliance (in
the default mode) and it will not break any existing code. The LFS
approach specifies to possibilities to implement the large files and
both will be available. Neither requires a program, which need not
handle large files, to be changed and those programs which have to
handle large files will almost always automatically work correct.
-- Uli
---------------. drepper at gnu.org ,-. Rubensstrasse 5
Ulrich Drepper \ ,-------------------' \ 76149 Karlsruhe/Germany
Cygnus Solutions `--' drepper at cygnus.com `------------------------