Hi Rainer,

I don't know about any other system which makes this special directory.

I can remove the compatibility files from the package and place gdbm.h
into /usr/include/ - that's no problem.

Could someone else please express his opinion of this topic?

Thank you and have a nice day,
Martina

Rainer Orth wrote:
> Hi Martina,
> 
>>> I don't see the point of installing those compat headers and library.  To
>>> my understanding, they are present only for those platforms that otherwise
>>> lack libdbm and dbm.h/ndbm.h, which isn't true for Solaris.  (They are only
>>> installed by the non-default install-compat Makefile target, btw.) To me,
>>> it seems far more natural to only install libgdbm and have gdbm.h 
>> I install those because they are the part of gnu-dbm project. If I 
>> install them too the user will be able to choose which libraries he 
>> would use - the originals or new ones (gdbm compatible). However I agree 
>> that this part is debatable.
> 
> indeed, especially since they are probably non-default for a reason :-)
> 
>>> in /usr/include where it can be easily found.
>> That's right however the directory /usr/include/gdbm/ can imho be easily 
>> found too.
> 
> For a human user who knows about this, perhaps, but for a configure script
> which has no idea about this special directory, this directory as much as
> hides the presence of gdbm.  Do you know of any other system that doesn't
> have the gdbm.h in /usr/include (or it's moral equivalent)?  It not, no
> opensource software will be prepared to deal with this situation, and
> everyone who wants to use gdbm on Solaris needs to deal with this quirk on
> his own by providing the necessary CPPFLAGS, making the system less
> accessible.
> 
> Regards.
>       Rainer
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Rainer Orth, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University


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