Re: Move sys/time.h to isoinfra package

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at eCosCentric dot com>]

Peter Korsgaard wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The following patch moves the sys/time.h header from the two BSD tcpip
> packages to the isoinfra package (needed for the following
> gettimeofday patch).

The isoinfra package is not meant to have implementation specifics in it. 
It's meant to abstract that, so implementations can come from other packages.

It's not meant to be just a place for common code. It's meant to be 
standards-based with "features" being implemented by potentially a numebr 
of packages, which may have different requirements. For example one of the 
(very very) long term goals I have is to port newlib to eCos, which would 
require a different implementation of these headers. It would all be 
infeasible if not for the isoinfra package.

Yes, there are exceptions, but those were accidental and should be gotten 
rid of in due course.

The (abstract) contents of isoinfra's sys/time.h should be dictated 
primarily by what POSIX 2004 <http://www.unix.org/version3/iso_std.html> 
requires should be exported or supplied by that header, rather than any 
particular implementation and its additional requirements. That's like most 
of the isoinfra headers. Look at <time.h> in isoinfra as an example of what 
should go there.

Not sure if this link works but it might:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/basedefs/sys/time.h.html

One thing that does make sense is reasonable default contents where the 
requirements are part of the POSIX API (as per that URL) and the defaults 
are reasonable for any implementation. But there should still be the 
possibility of overriding them.

So to cut a long story short, what you are trying to achieve is fine, but 
this isn't the right approach.

Jifl
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