Re: Good idea to rename files in include/uapi/ ?

[Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>]

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 09:41:17PM +0200, Alexander A. Klimov wrote:
> Hello there!
> 
> At the moment one can't checkout a clean working directory w/o any changed
> files on a case-insensitive FS as the following file names have lower-case
> duplicates:

And if you use a filesystem that is limited to 14 characters in name (or that
weird 8 + 3 thing) you'll also have problems.  Doctor, it hurts when I do it...

> Also even on a case-sensitive one VIm seems to have trouble with editing
> both case-insensitively equal files at the same time.

So file a bug report against vim.  Or use a vi variant without such a problem
(FWIW, nvi has nothing of that sort).

> I was going to make a patch renaming the respective duplicates, but I'm not
> sure:
> 
> *Is it a good idea to rename files in include/uapi/ ?*

It is not.  Strictly speaking, C99 allows implementation to consider the
header names differing only in case as refering to the same file, but then
it allows to ignore everything between the 8th character and the first
dot in those.  Not done on Unices, so #include <Shite.h> is not going to
pick /usr/include/shite.h

If it's used by any userland code, that's it - changing the name (in any fashion)
will break that userland code.  If it isn't, it shouldn't have been in include/uabi
in the first place.