Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Linking Libraries/Undefined variables
Message-ID: <2370@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 18 Aug 89 17:45:14 GMT
References: <3930009@hpcll01.HP.COM> <13489@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1687@bacchus.dec.com> <2369@auspex.auspex.com> <13592@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 21

>The original problem is that the HPWidgets call the function, not the
>application programmer.

Yup.  The "you" in my message referred to whoever would be tempted to
use "tempnam", which in this case was a programmer at HP who wrote that
part of the widget(s) in question.

>i'm surprised HP did this.

I presume they just tried it on HP-UX and, perhaps other OSes that have
both functions (Ultrix, SunOS, etc.).  If you want to make sure your
code runs on vanilla 4.xBSD, or systems derived therefrom that *haven't*
picked up large chunks of the S5 C library, you have to try it on those
systems....

I've seen people mention a book about writing portable software -
portable to various flavors of UNIX, anyway, I don't know about other
OSes - by some people from Rabbit Software; this might be a good
reference to sit by the desk of anybody trying to write portable
software, along with the POSIX book.  And, since one of the intents of X
is to let you write portable software to work under a window system....