Re: Convert 3.2 sources to ISO C90

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Marc Espie wrote:
> 
> > Is HP really so important that we have to hobble GCC for HP's
> > convenience?
> 
> I thought that GCC was supposed to be a portable compiler. Since when did
> this change ?

Portability refers to architecture, not compilability by random
vendor compilers.  For instance, we can't bootstrap GCC on Windows
by using VC++, and it's a good thing let me tell you - we victimized
GDB in that way years ago, and there was much huzzah-ing when we
finally got rid of all that crud.  I once did horrible things to GCC
ca 1989 to get Mac MPW C to compile it, and I can assure you that
you're very glad it never contaminated FSF GCC.

> This, for me, is an alarming trend. I can understand needing a gnat
> compiler to bootstrap ada (though unpleasant that might be). I'm worried
> about needing gcc 3.1 to bootstrap gcc 3.2 properly. As long as it only
> affects sublanguages, that's mostly fine (though making full support for
> ada on new platforms might be painful), but deliberately removing bootstrap
> ability for the base compiler on some existing platforms is something I
> don't quite grasp.

Perhaps it is going too far.  But GCC is the working compiler upon
which many of us depend for our livelihoods, and it's become an old
body of source code.  It was only a couple of years ago that we started
considering the deletion of obsolete configurations for instance;
before that it was like every file was sacred, even if it was actively
misleading.  So it's important to question every bit of the status
quo, and to make sure that the code doesn't fossilize because people
are too afraid or too comfortable to update it.

Stan