Re: .tar.xz only policy

[Jim Meyering]

Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> Jim Meyering:
>> > FWIW, xz cannot be built with GCC 2.95 (or older), making it
>> > unavailable on some platforms such as OpenBSD/vax.
>>
>> Thanks for the report.
>> This is the first I've heard about anyone being unable to build xz.
>
> xz requires a C99 compiler because it intermingles declarations and
> statements throughout.  That's an explicit choice by its author.

It's also not hard to work around.
Many projects make that choice (e.g., I did in coreutils), because
compilers that can deal with decl-after-stmt are so ubiquitous.

>> Seriously though, I asked Lasse Collin (xz author) about this issue
>> and he said he thought there was an OpenBSD patch to make xz build
>> even when you're stuck with gcc-2.95.
>
> I can authoritatively state that there is not.
> (If somebody knows a C-to-C compiler tool that can move declarations
> to the top of a block, let me know.)

You have misinterpreted.
Lasse thought that there is a patch (which may be applied to xz)
to make xz compile even with gcc-2.95.