> webservers need a better way of polling for events than select/poll, and that's platform-specific.
POSIX was just an example, and it is possible to write portable code using #ifdef. But you have to have a goal of writing portable code.
Re: libtool, most of the reason it's ever necessary is because of the historical rush and the incompatibilities created. Again, a single command line switch could handle that.
Still, plenty of software which has clearly only ever been built for Linux requires libtool. It's just the way things are done, just like autoconf. It works, poorly, inefficiently, fragile-ly -- and to most, mysteriously.
Appreciation for autoconf and libtool depends on one's position on the defeatism-pragmatism-idealism spectrum.
"POSIX was just an example, and it is possible to write portable code using #ifdef.."
Yes, two ways. One way uses autoconf (and tests each individual option to see which branch of the ifdef to use) and the other uses Imake (and has a big, continuously maintained database of which option to use on each system).
POSIX was just an example, and it is possible to write portable code using #ifdef. But you have to have a goal of writing portable code.
Re: libtool, most of the reason it's ever necessary is because of the historical rush and the incompatibilities created. Again, a single command line switch could handle that.
Still, plenty of software which has clearly only ever been built for Linux requires libtool. It's just the way things are done, just like autoconf. It works, poorly, inefficiently, fragile-ly -- and to most, mysteriously.
Appreciation for autoconf and libtool depends on one's position on the defeatism-pragmatism-idealism spectrum.