Kevin D. Kissell writes:
...
 > >The whole inconsistence was a stupid accident.  Since apparently only very
 > >little software was affected negativly (read: no known problems)  we didn't
 > >try to come up with some genious compatibility hacks but just fixed the
 > >definitions the hard way.
 > 
 > Having two independent sets of include files between kernel and userland
 > is always a bad idea, but is not *necessarily* broken, and sometimes
 > cannot be avoided.   The problem is not that the definitions are seperately
 > wired, but that they are incompatible - the risk one takes when one creates
 > multiple independent definitions.

      In this case the definitions are supposed to match the MIPS ABI.
That the glibc definitions (at least as of 2.1.1) do not is just a glibc bug.
This is no different that having Linux and FreeBSD header files for some
I/O controller, with one of them having incorrect values for some field
definitions.  The one which does not match the standard (the ABI or the
I/O controller hardware) is simply wrong.

     Since glibc is shared among a great many operating systems, it really
needs to be self-contained in regard to the C and POSIX and UNIX98 standards.