Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] New qemu-img convert -B option to preserve the COW aspect of images and/or re-base them

[Andreas Färber]

Am 03.06.2008 um 22:43 schrieb Jamie Lokier:

> Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > It's sloppy.  In general, using a non-portable feature for no good
> > reason other than you can is bad practice (even if we do depend on  
> > GCC).
>
> It's 2008, the standard is called C99 for a reason.
>
> In 1998, we would have used C89 constructs like function prototypes,
> wouldn't we?
>
> :-)
>
> If you don't want to use non-portable features, may I suggest
> "gcc -std=c89".
>
> (Half joking, I use -Wdeclaration-after-statement myself to catch
> this, since it became a standard GCC feature with no option to turn it
> off and keep other GNU extensions.  But then, I write code which is
> more portable than QEMU and target older architectures.)

Actually, I know someone maintaining a port of QEMU for BeOS, which  
uses GCC 2.95. Initially released in '99, that one is not compliant to  
C99.

Of course I'm not asking for QEMU to fully work with 'ancient' GCCs,  
but where C99 is not strictly necessary, it would help with such  
admittedly rare corner cases.

Andreas