Re: Patches to improve Hurd parts: include/sys/socket.h

[Roland McGrath <roland at redhat dot com>]

The libc source organization is not an exercise in abstraction for its own
sake.  The code is organized so that the pieces actually needed by more
than one configuration are in shared source files and not duplicated.

The mere fact that some new helpers apply sensically to any system does not
mean that they need to be in the generic part of the libc source code.
New things that are only used in the hurd code only need to be defined in
hurd-specific files.  

If it later turns out that some source code previously only used in one
configuration is useful to reuse in another configuration, then we move
that code into a shared file (either a sysdeps/ file common to the
interested configurations, or a generic one, depending on the details).

I don't see any reason to presuppose that these helpers will be desired by
a non-hurd configuration, so as to justify preemptively putting code into a
shared file when it is in fact unused on other configurations.


Thanks,
Roland