Re: [groff] Loss of MSVC support

[Keith Marshall]

On 12/02/19 21:32, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Having further examined the groff sources, I see that there is one
> thing the POSIX/C99 cleanup would have to drop: MS Visual C support.

Which, in consequence, would utterly break support on MS-Windows; an
excellent strategy for branding yourself as "public enemy no. 1".

> I doubt this is actually much of a problem.

You would be very sadly wrong!

> There has been no work on that support since 2005, 12 years ago.

So, it has been stable for 12 years (actually 14 years); that does *not*
mean that it is no longer relevant, yet you want to turn around and
destroy it?

> Since then, MINGW and the DeLorie compiler have offered generally
> satisfactory support for programs in groff's class. Indeed, Microsoft
> itself has much improved its support for the POSIX API and now has a
> stdlib.h header.

Huh?  What has that to do with *anything*?  MSVC has had a stdlib.h
header *forever* ... i.e. since MSVC version 1.0 originally appeared.
It has, and never has had, anything to do with POSIX/C99 compatibility;
Windows is *not* a POSIX compatible platform, and while C99 support may
have improved somewhat, in the very newest versions of MSVC, that
support remains sketchy, and it most certainly *does not* propagate back
into the MSVCRT.DLL implementations, on which free compilers such as
MinGW are obliged to depend, (even on the newest Windows versions).

I suspect that much of the code you are targetting as MSVC specific is
actually the code I wrote, around 14 years ago, to support *MinGW* (and
not specific to MSVC at all).  I can't speak for the requirements of the
DJGPP compiler, but rip that out, and you kill MinGW support.

-- 
Keith.