On Mon, 2010-04-26 at 23:50 +0100, Matthew Johnson wrote: > On Mon Apr 26 23:21, Salvo Tomaselli wrote: > > On Monday 26 April 2010 23:03:22 Don Armstrong wrote: > > > It's a system wide default which can be changed by the administrator > > > or by Debian. If the code fails when that default is changed, the code > > > is buggy. > > > > > > There's no reason for the code to rely on a particular setting of the > > > default when it can easily enforce the particular value that it only > > > works with. > > Can you indicate me which part of the standard says that? > > > > If POSIX-compliant apps may only work with one setting then the standard would > say "only this setting is compliant with POSIX". Since it does not, we must > assume that a sysadmin choosing either value results in a POSIX-compliant > system. If an application fails to work on such a system it must ipso facto not > be POSIX-compliant and hence buggy. POSIX and SUS define the behaviour an OS must provide to applications, not to the administrator. In these contexts. 'default value' normally means the value that will be used unless the application overrides it. Linux provides many options to deviate from POSIX-conformance, and there are sometimes good reasons to use them (for example the relatime mount option), but we should be wary of doing so. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
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