Where I work we build and distribute a library and a couple complex programs built on that library. All code is written in C and is available on most 'standard' systems like Windows, Linux, Aix, Solaris, Darwin.

I started in the QA department and while running tests recently I have been reminded several times that I need to remember to set the file descriptor limits and default stack sizes higher or bad things will happen. This is particularly the case with Solaris and now Darwin.

Now this is very strange to me because I am a believer in 0 required environment fiddling to make a product work. So I am wondering if there are times where this sort of requirement is a necessary evil, or if we are doing something wrong.

Edit:

Great comments that describe the problem and a little background. However I do not believe I worded the question well enough. Currently, we require customers, and hence, us the testers, to set these limits before running our code. We do not do this programatically. And this is not a situation where they MIGHT run out, under normal load our programs WILL run out and seg fault. So rewording the question, is requiring the customer to change these ulimit values to run our software to be expected on some platforms, ie, Solaris, Aix, or are we as a company making it to difficult for these users to get going?

Bounty: I added a bounty to hopefully get a little more information on what other companies are doing to manage these limits. Can you set these pragmatically? Should we? Should our programs even be hitting these limits or could this be a sign that things might be a bit messy under the covers? That is really what I want to know, as a perfectionist a seemingly dirty program really bugs me.