Time to svn rm include/malloc.h

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 3:03 PM Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 04:01:23PM -0400, Steve Wills wrote:
> > Yeah, a lot of ports have things like:
> >
> > sed -e 's/malloc.h/stdlib.h/' *.[ch]
> >
> > because they have autotools that check for malloc.h existence and
> include it
> > if it exists, so you end up with things like:
> >
> > ...
> > #include <stdlib.h>
> > ...
> > #if HAVE_MALLOC_H
> > #include <stdlib.h>
> > #endif
> > ...
> >
> > which ends up harmless, but sub-optimal.
> >
> So wouldn't it be more useful to remove warning and either include
> stdlib.h or provide some parts of malloc-related defines, esp. the
> non-portable bits from jemalloc ?
>

We've provided an error for the past 20 years. And a warning for the last
24 years. Nobody is usefully using it today. In fact, it is getting in the
way, which is why we should just remove it entirely.


> We are not in position to teach third-party sw developers good manners.
>

Autotools would do the right thing if we just remove this file. We're being
bad by having it and having it's inclusion be an error. It's not required
by any standard, and automation out there does the right thing when it's
not present,  so we should complete the process started in 1994 by ache and
just remove it.

Warner


> > Steve
> >
> >
> > On 3/31/20 3:50 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> > > We started warning in 1994 that malloc.h was an obsolete relic of a
> bygon
> > > era. It was almost removed from FreeBSD 2.0. It's time to remove it
> because
> > > it causes more harm than good to ports these days. 25 years of advance
> > > warning should be enough, I'd say.
> > >
> > > To that end, I plan on removing it from -current on April 15th.
> > >
> > > Is there any reason I shouldn't do this?
> > >
> > > Warner
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
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