Re: Another package ported

[Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>]

> I always wondered about that.  In fact, I asked why we don't define it here
> a year or so ago.  POSIX says in gethostname()
> 
>  Host names are limited to 255 bytes.
> 
> (at least in my recent draft).
> 
> So doesn't it make sense for us to define this macro? All users of
> MAXHOSTNAMELEN rely on the standard POSIX interface, so even if the Hurd
> itself is not limited by this, those programs might rightly rely on this
> limit and still claim POSIX compatibility.  In fact, it seems if we want to
> be POSIX compatible, we must not return hostnames longer than that limit, or?

I think that is reasonable.  The was no POSIX standard specifying
gethostname at the time the original decision was made.