Re: making coreutils depend on c99

[Paul Eggert]

Albert Chin <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 07:51:50PM +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> So, people building coreutils will have a choice: apply the
>> c99->c89 patch or install a modern compiler and use that
>> instead of the vendor-supplied one.
>
> There are two issues with C99, compiler support and library support. A
> survey of all of our platforms wrt C99 support is available at:
>   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2006-January/msg00275.html

Thanks for the pointer.  For coreutils, though, the only C99 feature
that it relies on is statements-before-declarations.  That URL refers
to the struct hack, which is a different matter.

The struct hack is also a nice feature to use, but it is more-easily
configurable via an autoconf test, with a fallback to a trailing array
member with one element.  Statements-before-declarations isn't that
easy to conditionalize; you either use it and require it, or you
don't.