[Xapian-discuss] Xapian 1.1.5 (release candidate for 1.2.0) released

[Jean-Francois Dockes]

Olly Betts writes:
 > On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 03:44:21PM +0200, Jean-Francois Dockes wrote:
 > > Given that uuid_generate() is not part of POSIX as far as I know, wouldn't
 > > it be nice that configure either makes a little more effort to search for
 > > it or provide command line options to designate the uuid library (ie:
 > > something like --with-uuidlib=xxx) ?
 > 
 > It's not POSIX, but the UUID interface we expect is specified by OSF DSE 1.1
 > according to the man page.  So it seems to be standardised.

OSF DCE is not exactly Unix gospel. If I remember well it was a failed
initiative in the 90s from HP, IBM and DEC to counter Sun NFS which was a
bit too open for their taste. I think Microsoft took up parts of it for
DCOM. So it's a standard, in the sense that there is a document that
describes it. 

I'm really not an expert on DCE, but, by the way, I had a quick look at the
document and it seems that the specified interface is actually the one
implemented on FreeBSD, uuid_create().
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9629399/chap2.htm#tagcjh_05_02_08
There is no mention of uuid_generate() on the OpenGroup site.

Apparently uuid_generate() replaced uuid_create() in implementations at
some point, maybe someone on the list knows why ?

Anyway, this is not to suggest that you change the code, just trying to
indicate that uuid_generate() does not appear universal, and that it is
reasonable to handle it as a portability issue.

 > As I said, if you can send a sane patch, that would be cool.  I don't have
 > access to FreeBSD, and I don't really have time to make space and install
 > it right now.

Yes I will do this.

 > Not sure a configure argument is needed - we should be able to just probe
 > for each interface and use whichever we find.

I just meant that, in the case that the DCE uuid_generate() interface was
installed as a port (e2fsprogs), it will be found in /usr/local, not
/usr. It would appear reasonable that the configure script makes an effort
to look for it in there in addition to /usr.

Probing for the specific FreeBSD interface is another thing, part of the
effort above.

I am not sure that FreeBSD is the only system that will install additional
libraries outside of the /usr tree.

Cheers,
JF