my first take at documenting the curl_off_t situation when doing an upgrade

< 7.19.0 to >= 7.19.x
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Stenberg 2008-08-23 11:34:42 +00:00
parent a604682805
commit 9d5d6c557b
1 changed files with 40 additions and 0 deletions

40
lib/README.curl_off_t Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
curl_off_t explained
====================
curl_off_t is a data type provided by the external libcurl include headers. It
is the type meant to be used for the curl_easy_setopt() options that end with
LARGE. The type is 64bit large on most modern platforms.
Transition from < 7.19.0 to >= 7.19.0
-------------------------------------
Applications that used libcurl before 7.19.0 that is rebuilt with a libcurl
that is 7.19.0 or later may or may not have to worry about anything of
this. We have made a significant effort to make the transition really seamless
and transparant.
You have have to take notice if you are in one of the following situations:
o Your app is using or will after the transition use a libcurl that is built
with LFS (large file support) disabled even though your system otherwise
supports it.
o Your app is using or will after the transition use a libcurl that doesn't
support LFS at all, but your system and compiler support 64bit data types.
In both these cases, the curl_off_t type will now (after the transition) be
64bit where it previously were 32bit. This will cause a binary incompatibility
that you MAY need to deal with.
Historicly
----------
Previously, before 7.19.0, the curl_off_t type would be rather strongly
connected to the size of the system off_t type, where currently curl_off_t is
independent of that.
The strong connection to off_t made it troublesome for application authors
since when they did mistakes, they could get curl_off_t type of different
sizes in the app vs libcurl, and that caused strange effects that were hard to
track and detect by users of libcurl.