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Re: Convert 3.2 sources to ISO C90
- From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin at dberlin dot org>
- To: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 16:22:07 -0400
- Subject: Re: Convert 3.2 sources to ISO C90
On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 04:04 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Now that 3.1 is out, and we've flushed lots of old obsolete configs
from the sources, it's a good time to consider dropping the
anachronistic requirement that GCC sources be written in K&R C.
Once upon a time, this was the right thing to do; there were many
systems for which only an ancient C compiler was available, and
in the absence of effective cross-compilation machinery, it was
necessary that GCC be compilable by the ancient host compiler.
The situation today is quite different. While there may still be
hosts for which only a pre-ISO compiler is available from the
vendor (HPs come to mind), there aren't any that don't already
have a GCC port, and there is no chance that any new ones will
materialize in the future.
In fact, the era of K&R compilers is so far past that many of our
younger developers have never even seen such a compiler, and GCC's
rules of K&R compatibility are just this mumbo-jumbo that takes
cycles away from real development. Admittedly, it's not a huge
cost, but why spend even small amounts of time on something that's
no longer needed?
So I'd like to formally propose that the K&R compatibility requirement
be dropped for 3.2, and that patches converting K&R syntax to pure
ISO be accepted as obvious improvements.
I agree completely.
As a datapoint, GDB has required ISO C, rather than K&R C, for a while now, and 0 complaints have been heard so far.
One could always ansi2knr all the files if need be, anyway.
--Dan
Stan