Re: configure speedup proposal: add --assume-c99 and --assume-posix2008 flags

[Russ Allbery]

John Spencer <address@hidden> writes:

> having an option like --assume-c99 could provide a shortcut so all
> checks like

> - have stdint.h
> - have snprintf()
> - etc

These are un-alike, just to mention.  A surprising number of platforms
have an snprintf function that's broken.  To test it properly, you need
something akin to the gnulib snprintf check, and it's broken in enough
places that you may not want to assume the result.

Some of the problems with snprintf are also quite serious.  For example,
Solaris 9 (which I believe is otherwise C99-conforming) would return -1
when given NULL, 0 as the first arguments to snprintf, which makes it
impossible to use snprintf safely in many programs.

See:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/snprintf.html

for more information about the portability mess.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>