On Tue, 29 Dec 2009, Craig Berry wrote:

>> One advantage of using the method I chose is that it pretty well
>> guarantees that CURL_TYPEOF_CURL_OFF_T is consistent with the actual
>> type of off_t, or else the compiler will let you know about it.
>
> For some reason the maintainers appear to want to guarantee the opposite of
> that, i.e. that CURL_TYPEOF_CURL_OFF_T has 64 bits even when off_t has only
> 32 bits. My guess would be that for binary compatibility reasons they want
> the libcurl interfaces to all use 64-bit integers even when off_t is only 32
> bits.

That's exactly the reason. If we rely on off_t's size and off_t's size can
vary depending on compiler options or include files or whatever, then we have
learned the hard way that this very often punishes the users who occasionally
happen to use a library with off_t set to one size and an app that uses an
off_t with a different size. That causes badness.

The current variable size cleanup effort was made to make sure that apps and
libcurl work the same way no matter what size off_t is said to use. libcurl is
no longer depending on off_t nor which size off_t has.

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se
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