Re: PATCH RFA: Support Plan 9 extensions in gcc

[Dave Korn <dave dot korn dot cygwin at googlemail dot com>]

Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Dave Korn wrote:

>>   Since it often helps to have a working implementation in the field in order
>> to drive the standards process and provide feedback as people discover any
>> problems that may be lurking in the semantics, I think there's a strong
>> argument for accepting the patch.  Plus it has testcases and documentation,
>> what more could you ask? ;-)
> 
> Plan 9 provides such an implementation in the field to use as a basis for 
> a standards proposal.  What do the Plan 9 compiler maintainers plan to do 
> regarding their extensions if C1x ends up standardising something 
> conflicting?  

  Well, hopefully they and we will all be in the same standards process
together and be able to converge the compilers and the standard to a common
agreement.

> We should perhaps make clear in the documentation that if 
> C1x ends up with semantics interpreting the same code differently from any 
> existing or new anonymous structures and unions extension, the C1x 
> semantics will replace the old extension semantics in GCC.  Doing 
> otherwise involves a long-term commitment to maintaining an incompatible 
> set of semantics for a nonstandard corner case.

  Yep, sure.  We had to do this recently for c99 inline semantics and it
wasn't /such/ a big deal, was it?

    cheers,
      DaveK