Re: Strange pedantic error message

[dewar at gnat dot com]

<<It is usually a good idea to try to make sure that your code will be
portable to compilers other than GCC.
>>

That is Fergus' opinion, to which he is welcome, but it is not fact, and
whether it is a reasonably opinion depends on the situation. From the
point of view of the GNU project, which is about writing software to
extend the capabilities of Free Software, it is typically only relevant
to make sure that your software compiles using gcc, and that is the
position reflected in the GNU manual.

GNU C has some very useful and very important extensions. If you are
writing Free Software, which you always intend to be compiled using
GNU C, then it is not only acceptable, but usually preferable to 
be free to take advantage of these extensions, there is no point in
obfuscating your code for the purposes of compatibility which is
not relevant.

So once again, this is not a matter of "good idea" or "bad idea", it is
simply a matter of choosing options appropriately. Since we are gnu.org,
we presume that participants are primarily interested in the development
of Free Software, so it is definitely NOT a good idea in this forum to
take the position that the language GNU C should not be used!