Re: Re: [gnu-prog-discuss] An experimental GNU Assembly

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> > And as I said, multiple times now, I think this is a good idea.
> > Please raise it.  It won't get done by it self, nor by repeating it.
>
> I have raised it; my suggestion was rejected.

I think this was wrong, and out of touch with reality.

The last system to only support K&R was HP-UX in the late nineties; the 
C89 compiler was only available for a (large) fee.  HP itself is now 
providing GCC builds for HP-UX.

No practical porting platform has lacked support for C89 for a while.

GCC is assuming C89 and has been for several years.

Coreutils, grep and other programs have been using small parts of C99, 
too, and the only problems were encountered under Windows using the 
Microsoft compiler.  Windows using GCC is fine.  These small parts of 
C99 have been supported since GCC 2.95, which is the oldest still in use 
(by NetBSD among others).

This is purely a technical matter, and there is no reason why 
well-founded patches to the GNU Coding Standards should be rejected.  I 
think rejecting this change would be an extremely bad precedent 
(accepting it would be an extremely good precedent, though).

Reuben, please rewrite your patch as multiple small changes and Cc 
address@hidden on the set.

Paolo