[haiku-development] POSIX error code

Hi there,

The latest and current POSIX standard demands that error codes have to 
be positive numbers.
Since this would cause a great deal of changes and possible 
compatibility problems for Haiku, I would like to get our POV to the 
people responsible for revising those standards.
It looks like the OpenGroup Austin Group maintains the POSIX standard, 
and I just subscribed to a public mailing list where we can actually 
make our voice heard.

I would like to submit the following mail there:
-------------8<------------
Subject: Positive error codes since Issue 6

The change history of POSIX errno states for issue 6:
"Values for errno are now required to be distinct positive values 
rather than non-zero values. This change is for alignment with the ISO/
IEC 9899:1999 standard."

I'm writing on behalf of the Haiku project (http://www.haiku-os.org/) 
which is an open source implementation of BeOS.
In BeOS, the values for errno were actually defined as negative values, 
and software written for BeOS may rely on that. BeOS is older than the 
ISO 1999 standard, and hence, it does not comply to it. Since Haiku is 
compatible with BeOS, we're bound to the same restriction.

Not surprisingly, there are already applications out there that assume 
positive error codes, and those are hard to port to our otherwise POSIX 
compliant system.

Is there any way this change can be reverted, or limited in a way that 
allows Haiku to be POSIX compliant without breaking compatibility with 
previous versions of BeOS?

-------------8<------------

Any comments, or suggestions for improvements?

Bye,
   Axel.

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