Re: failure in building gnulib tests wih pcc on debian

[Stefano Lattarini]

On Tuesday 15 November 2011, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Eric Blake wrote:
> > > ... on an unstable Debian using pcc
> > > (Portable C Compiler, version 1.1.0~DEVEL+20110422-1
> > ...
> > Warnings like this, and the error in test-float.c, mean that all other
> > packages using the same gnulib modules will have the same problem.  We
> > should fix it upstream in gnulib.
> 
> I don't think it's worth spending time on supporting pcc in gnulib
> at this point. My evaluation of pcc-1.0.0 [1] revealed a number of
> code generation bugs. Let them fix their compiler to produce working
> code first.
> 
JFTR, this is fine by me.  I tried to compile grep with pcc "just for
kicks", not for any serious reason, and I'm not interest in having it
really working in that setup.  Two minor points though:

 - Apart from the build failures of the gnulib test(s), GNU grep has
   built fine with pcc 1.1.0 (Debian:pcc_1.1.0~DEVEL+20110422-1), and
   its testsuite has passed.

 - Running the gnulib tests with pcc and reporting problems to its
   developers could significantly help them to find (and posssibly
   fix) their bugs much faster.  The risk of not doing so is that
   that compiler will gain momentum nonetheless, and gnulib will some
   day have to start supporting it "as is" (for benefits of older
   versions out in the wild), which means more Yet More Workarounds
   in the gnulib code base.

Though, as I've said, this is of no real importance to me, so I won't
try to push you in any direction.

Thanks,
  Stefano