pppd namespace pollution

[Till Straumann]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:

>Am Fre, 2003-03-21 um 09.46 schrieb Valette Eric:
>
>>Till Straumann wrote:
>>
>>>Here are some symbols defined and globally exported by pppd.
>>>I didn't even include things like "link_down", "exit_code", "write_char"
>>>just the worst ones:
>>>
>>>   debug output modem netmask protocols status user
>>>
--snip --

>>While I agree with the namespace polution problem, I think its easy to 
>>understand why things are like that :
>>	- The sources for the program originally come from system where 
>>namespace polution is not a problem as each process has its own address 
>>space,
>>	- If you modify all the globals, tracking changes  of the original 
>>packages and apply them becomes a nightmare,
>>
>Exactly. That's why I say, that renaming globals can only be considered
>as a workaround and a systematic solution is needed, instead.
>
Well, some kludge is not hard to find:

  1) build the library.
  2) find exported symbols:      nm --defined-only -g  libxxx.a
  3) sed the sources, adding a unique prefix to all exported globals. 
[there's a risk of corrupting
      commenting text, e.g.
          int debug; /* set debug to print debug messages */
      becomes
          int pppxz67_debug; /* set pppxz67_debug to print pppxz67_debug 
messages */
      but that's probably acceptable.]

If the prefix is properly chosen, it can easily be removed again (useful 
when tracking changes
of the original package).
 
Even with such an approach I'm a proponent of maintaining separate 
libraries.

-- Till