[RFC]: designing customizable format attributes

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 09:59:17PM -0400, Kaveh R. Ghazi wrote:
>  > > That appears to be where we disagree.
>  > 
>  > Yes.  "nothing" is "people need to patch GCC to add extra format types
>  > (but then can implement whatever sort of format checking they want) or
>  > to use other checking software".
> 
> Most gcc users wouldn't know where to start in order to patch GCC to
> add extra formats.  I suspect you and I are nearly or actually the
> only ones who've ever done it.  Even if people were to learn out of
> necessity, you're requiring them to maintain their own set of patches
> against GCC, essentially encouraging mini-forks.
> 
> So your attempt to define doing nothing as something useful to
> developers doesn't hold water.

For the record, I've done it too, and I'm with Kaveh on this one. 
There's no reason GCC should need to know about cmn_err and its quirky
%b.

>  > And without a large-scale survey of the sorts of format strings
>  > used in a diverse collection of software, we don't know what the
>  > vast majority of what people want is.

I fail to see how "what the vast majority of people want" is relevant
here.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC