Re: AC_TYPE_SIGNAL obsolete?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2008, Eric Blake wrote:
> | I think you are dead wrong on your last point, Paul.
>
> There's a difference between obsolete compliance (and yes, Paul is right
> that C compilers that required signal handlers with return type of int
> were implicitly made obsolete 19 years ago when C89 was standardized) and

While C compilers may have originally had something to do with 
returning 'int' rather than 'void' that was not even still the case 
when POSIX.1 was ratified since virtually all compilers current at 
that time supported 'void', 'const', and prototypes.  The cause at 
that time was that the systems were already using 'int' and so system 
headers said 'int'.  Changing it was a big deal for the users since 
they would have to change their code.  POSIX.1 and ANSI C were 
ratified fairly close in time.  I recall having to deal with this 
issue on fairly recent systems in the 1996-98 timeframe so 'int' 
didn't just go away because ANSI C said so.  The switch took place 
after the next raft of POSIX standard updates around 1996 or so. 
Even C99 is taking a long time to become deployed, partly because GCC 
is not helping as much as it should be by refusing to add update 
headers like stdint.h to existing systems.

I am saddened that it seems that Paul has gone to the dark side  ...
:-)

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/