Re: namespace issues with old C headers

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz at redhat dot com> writes:

| >It turns out that, for my example program that only includes <iostream>
| >and winds up with an assert() definition, the problem is already fixed
| >in 3.3 and the trunk!  This one has plagued me forever (I use gcc for
| >development and find that by programs often don't compile with Sun's
| >or HP's compilers), so I'm quite happy. 
| 
| Well that's good news. 
| 
| In the future, if you run into stuff like this you should tell us so
| that people know things are broken. This is the first I've heard of it.
| 
| Getting the includes right is really tricky. If people can come up with
| a better solution, well, I'm interested (especially if it's a real patch
| that passes make check.) Please don't be discouraged to try something
| new: there is substantial room for improvement on many issues.

I'm not trying to discourage people.

Before, patches along those lines are applied, you need to consider
the following:

  1) it is the header by itself that is problematic of the entities
     that it declares?

  2) if you replace the standard header by an internal header that
     nevertheless declares those entities, then the portability
     problems mentioned are unlikely solve.  Hence my question:  What
     exactly is the problem we are trying to solve?

The above aren't rhetorical questions.

-- Gaby