I asked about removing this feature once, and I only got minor
pushback. While this API is part of POSIX, it doesn't seem like they
are standardized in terms of header files & library names.
POSIX, he say #include <ndbm.h>. And there's no special `-l foo'
required, unlike for some other include files.
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/ndbm.h.html
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/c99.html#tag_20_11_13
That's what configure.ac tries first.
Well, fair enough. That would remove a ton of hair when it comes to
m4/ndbm.m4. I think part of this was because we always made it a
requirement so we tried to find it whereever it was. If we just made it
optional then the few people who cared would be required to set CPPFLAGS
and/or LDFLAGS appropriately.
dnl Classic ndbm with no library required (eg NetBSD): try this
dnl first so we don't accidentally link in a pointless but harmless
dnl library in one of the later ndbm.h+libfoo tests:
NMH_CHECK_NDBM(ndbm.h,,,
dnl Berkeley DBv2 emulating ndbm: header in db.h, e.g., 32-bit Cygwin:
NMH_CHECK_NDBM(db.h,db,,
dnl Berkeley DBv1 emulating ndbm:
NMH_CHECK_NDBM(ndbm.h,db,,
NMH_CHECK_NDBM(ndbm.h,db1,,
...
I'd rather make this support conditional; if we can't find a working
db/dbm library then we just don't support duplicate message
suppression.
As long as slocal's -(no)suppressdup were errors so the user knew. And
a `make check' of it would be good because then of the `skip' in the
final count.
Looks to me like the slocal test already does a check if that, if that's
what you mean.
Would the big `nmh configuration' that's output at the end of
./configure then include whether ndbm.h support was found? It would be
handy if more were there, e.g. the recent `ICONV_ENABLED', as it's
something the user sees, might even read, and can easily pass onto us.
Sure, that would make sense. Although I think we've moving iconv() to
the "required" list, so having that in the configure output doesn't make
sense to me.
Also, the implementation seems to have the Message-Id database grow
without bounds, so I have to wonder how much it's being used.
Perhaps disk space has kept pace. Or the user sees the `possibly
corrupt file' error message and deletes it or otherwise fixes.
Maybe? Or maybe next to nobody uses it? :-) In a perfect world it would
be automatically pruned of old entries, but I don't think it's worth
spending too much time on that code.
--Ken
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