[lsb-discuss] Shall LSB SDK headers be compliant to source levelstandards?

[Wichmann, Mats D]

>ISO C99 and SuSv3 provide requirements to header files.
>For example, ISO C99 defines a set of system header files as follows:
>  <assert.h>
>  <complex.h>
>  <ctype.h>
>  <errno.h>
>  <fenv.h>
>  <float.h>
>  <inttypes.h>
>  <iso646.h>
>  <limits.h>
>  <locale.h>
>  <math.h>
>  <setjmp.h>
>  <signal.h>
>  <stdarg.h>
>  <stdbool.h>
>  <stddef.h>
>  <stdint.h>
>  <stdio.h>
>  <stdlib.h>
>  <string.h>
>  <tgmath.h>
>  <time.h>
>  <wchar.h>
>  <wctype.h>
>
>But the LSB SDK is generated on base of the LSB Specification and it is
>mostly oriented on the LSB allocation of interface elements between
>header files. As a result several of ISO C99 header files are absent in
>the LSB SDK (lsb-sdk-3.1.0-4.i486):
>  <float.h>
>  <iso646.h>
>  <stdarg.h>
>  <stdbool.h>
>  <stdint.h>
>  <tgmath.h>
>
>So my question is:
>What is a mission of the LSB SDK header files and shall they 
>be compliant to source level standards?

The mission is to support compilation, but not necessarily
to provide a formal source-standards conforming environment.
Although it sounds odd, the LSB describes only the way a
standards-conforming binary program operates, not how
you construct one.  The latter has been a "future direction"
item, not one that's just totally excluded.

This has been a bit of a sticky area and I think we
ought to continue discussing it, as we have been on
and off for many years.  Things are not intentionally
in different headers than in POSIX, nor are (most)
POSIX headers intentionally missing, although it
is true that if there is no element in the LSB database
that is assigned to a header, there is no header
generated.

Some headers are missing because our data capture is
from an instance of glibc, and glibc also does not
provide certain of these headers, thus the database
would not show anything in those headers (applies
to nearly all of the headers you listed as missing).
I'm not averse to making the headers appear in a future
revision if we can do that without breaking the way
the headers work now.