Re: Order priority issues for special 3type sub-section

Alejandro Colomar
2024-03-07T10:24:16Z

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On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 05:06:29AM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > I think projects shouldn't use their own subsection. They should
> > instead use the same sections, in this case 3type, and use LIBRARY to
> > document the library needed to get the thing.
>
> I don't think this works as a general rule, because different projects
> might want to document things that live in different namespaces. For
> things that are going to be "enforced" to share the same namespace
> such as programs, or header files, then that's fine. But for function
> interfaces or language features, for example which might be the same
> on different implementations using sub-section makes sense to me. For
> example it seems it would be rather inappropriate to document perl's
> if(3perl) as if(3). :)

Hmmm, yeah, other languages live in other namespaces, so they do well
using their own subsection.

> > And in cases wher various projects offer the same page exact page, maybe
> > /etc/alternatives should decide.
>
> alternatives are supposed to be used for the same interface, not for
> conflicting and unrelated ones, in this case if these document stuff
> that is completely different then that would not seem appropriate.

But C libraries live in the same namespace as libc, so they do indeed
implement the same interface (hopefully; I hate it when a library
implements something different with the name of something already
existing) in a different library.

This is the case of libbsd.

Though I understand other systems that you support have different
rules, such as using 3m for libm stuff, so for supporting those systems,
I understand you prefer to stay in 3bsd.

> In this particular case, what I'll be doing is to remove the
> timeval(3bsd), timespec(3bsd) links everywhere, and stop installing
> the TIMEVAL_TO_TIMESPEC(3bsd) and TIMESPEC_TO_TIMEVAL(3bsd) on glibc
> based systems, and check on what others these are already provided,
> and install those there conditionally.

Good.

Have a lovely day!
Alex

>
> Thanks,
> Guillem