Re: [PATCH] Add support for uintmax_t type on FreeBSD 4.9

> "David Syzdek" <syzdek@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> ...
>>> I have a stupid question.
>>>
>>> Would it be a more appropriate improvement to do it like this:
>>>
>>>        ifdef USE_THIS_AS_UINTMAX_T
>>>            BASIC_CFLAGS += -Duintmax_t="$(USE_THIS_AS_UINTMAX_T)"
>>>        endif
>>>
>>> and then add a section for FreeBSD 4.9-SECURITY like this:
>>>
>>>        ifeq ($(uname_R),4.9-SECURITY)
>>>                USE_THIS_AS_UINTMAX_T = uint32_t
>>>        endif
>>>
>>> That way, an oddball 64-bit machine can use uint64_t here if it wants to,
>>> possibly including FreeBSD 4.9-SECURITY backported to 64-bit ;-).
>>>
>>
>> Your suggestion provides more flexibility for other environments. I
>> was making the assumption that 64-bit systems would define uintmax_t,
>> however in retrospect that would be unwise.
>> Would you like me to resubmit the patches with your modifications?
>
> Actually there was a reason why I said this was a "stupid" question.  I
> think your assumption on 64-bit platforms would hold in practice, and my
> suggestion could be an unnecessary overengineering.  If nobody knows of a
> system that would benefit from such a generalization, your original patch
> would be better, partly because I think:
>
>  (1) USE_THIS_AS_UINTMAX_T is just for demonstration of concept and is a
>     terrible name we cannot possibly use in our Makefile.  We have to
>     spend brain cycles to come up with a better name; and
>
>  (2) It may be tricky to come up with autoconf macros to determine what to
>     set USE_THIS_AS_UINTMAX_T to.
>
> As a slightly unrelated aside, I find it somewhat unfortunate that the
> conditional says "4.9-SECURITY", which is a bit too explicit and specific.
> to my taste.  I do not know how FreeBSD versioning scheme works, but
> wouldn't your change work equally well for 4.9-RELEASE or 4.11-RELEASE?
>
> I suspect that you would want to say "$(uname_R) that begins with '4.' or
> smaller needs this workaround", as strtoul(3) manual page seems to appear
> first in FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE (but not found in FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE).
>