namespace issues with old C headers

[Nathan Myers]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 03:50:34PM -0700, Joe Buck wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 10:35:12AM +0200, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> > | My code might compile on GNU's
> > | C++ library version foo, but not version bar, and certainly not in
> > | someone else's libstdc++ implementation. 
> > 
> > Yes, and that is not libstdc++'s problem.  If you want to solve that
> > problem then you need to take to the C++ standards committees.
> 
> I disagree; the standards committees are not forcing libstdc++ to
> promiscuously include headers, they are only PERMITTING it to do so.
> The standard is a minimum requirement only.

Joe is right, this a quality-of-implementation matter.  Unfortunately, 
it's hard to fix, and a lot of work too.  One problem is that the 
language offers no template-renaming features, although a lot can 
be accomplished with derivation.

The good news is that it can be done incrementally, and every little
bit helps.  The bad news is that nothing can be done about the mess
in the C headers we depend on.

Nathan Myers
ncm-nospam@cantrip.org