Re: _wstat on Windows (actually stat stuff in general)

[Simon McVittie <simon mcvittie collabora co uk>]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2011 at 11:03:00 +0200, Kean Johnston wrote:
> Offering a portable, no-ifdefs-required,
> suitably-large-sized-to-accomodate-everyone structure ... yes
> *STRUCTURE* that all code can use completely portably without having
> to worry about anything ...

... until GLib is ported to platform-of-the-week (Hurd? Plan 9? Windows 8?)
which has interesting fields that weren't in the traditional "struct stat";
at which point it either becomes non-comprehensive on the new platforms
(missing information that the new platform provides), or variable-size
(#ifdefs), or an ABI break on existing platforms (GLib 4). Comprehensive,
same layout on all platforms, fixed layout over time: pick any two.

GFileInfo is opaque/extensible/indeterminate-size precisely so that the fact
that its layout changes over time is not an ABI break.

    S