Re: [PATCH 1/1] git-compat-util: add a test balloon for C99 supporty

From: Carlo Arenas <carenas@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 22, 2021, 22:22 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPUEspjj4bpnRsr=vpnzuvoHqw9A19fpPcX65oSHZryiyKXxEg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwnkzdepm.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 2:10 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

>
> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
>
> >> But if we were to do so, perhaps we'd want something like what I
> >> gave at https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqy25lwa86.fsf@gitster.g/ in
> >> its place to avoid confusing people.
> >
> > That sounds like a good course of action to me.
> >
> > Please note that the MSVC-related adjustment of the `FLEX_ARRAY` block is
> > still needed, I think.
>
> The "something like what I gave ... to avoid confusing people" patch
> is following up on the direction to drop the patch with -std=gnu99
> change.  IIRC, your MSVC adjustment was to tweak that patch we were
> discussing of dropping, so even if it is still needed, it won't be
> part of what I was doing.

I think it will still be needed, I have somewhere indeed a bugfix (which I never got back to clean up enough for sending) to that section because it was not C89 safe either, which is what dscho is likely fixing from the point of view of MSVC that doesn't support the GNU syntax that we use as a fallback eagerly than we should.

FWIW I got the chance to try to build in a long unmaintained debian 6 (AKA squeeze) with gcc 4.4.5 and was greeted by the following edited message:

  error: 'for' loop initial declarations are only allowed in C99 mode
  note: use option -std=c99 or -std=gnu99 to compile your code

So I think whatever we do, likely it wouldn't be confusing to whoever is affected.

Carlo