Re: [patch] Get coreutils 6.1 to build on a ANSI 89 compiler

[mwoehlke]

Bob Proulx wrote:
> Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> > The ANSI C 89 compilers refuses code that fail to declare variables at
> > the start of the block.  I found this problem on RHEL 2.1.  The code
> > refused to compile, and I have to move the variables up to the start
> > of the block to get it building.
>
> One of the reasons for the "soft" requirement of C99, I say soft
> because Jim included an easy way to patch the code back to C89, was
> because is it believed that non-C99 capable systems are now so old as
> to be either obsolete or hobby only systems.  Having a default
> compilation fail on those system is one way of discovering any real
> system that actually is still alive out of hiding.
>
> With that in mind may I ask a few questions?  (Please make sure to
> keep the mailng list address in the reply.)
>
>  * What architecture are you using RHEL 2.1 AS on?
>      uname -m
>  * What compiler is available on that platform?
>      gcc --version
>  * What libc is available there?
>      ldd --version
>
> And now the big question.  Could you say a few words about why you are
> using that platform?  RHEL 2.1 AS released in May 2002.  That is four
> years old now.  There are certainly good reasons to keep using a
> stable platform.  But you are trying to compile a new coreutils there
> which implies that you are not keeping that platform stable and are
> instead trying to pull it forward.  Wouldn't it be better in that case
> to upgrade to a more recent system?

Ok, I've been wanting to say something for a while, and you just gave me 
an opening.

I have built coreutils (actually, a nice GNU suite plus a few others 
like VIM7) on over a half dozen platforms, including Solaris 2.7, Irix, 
HPUX 11.x, AIX... and of course Linux. These are "old" systems, but they 
are still used in production (we keep them because our customers still 
use them).

I keep noticing that people seem to want to only support GNU software on 
the latest stable release of Linux, and that really bothers me. The 
great thing about GNU is that is isn't limited to just Linux, and I 
think continuing to support platforms that are still used in production 
environments is important.

Now, to answer the original question, I *think* most of those have a C99 
compiler available, but without checking all ten OS/hardware 
combinations (not counting Cygwin, where I use the officially maintained 
toolchain), I can't say that with certainty.

I'm not against making C99 a *soft* requirement (part of building that 
toolchain I mentioned was dealing with non-C99 compilers - not just with 
coreutils), especially if configure tries to find a C99 compiler if you 
didn't point it at one explicitly (how many OS's does this work with, 
btw?), but there are still systems used by real people (and by big 
companies!) that certainly don't have C99 by default.

--
Matthew
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