Proposed platform assumption changes

[Sam Hartman]

>>>>> "Simo" == Simo Sorce <simo at redhat.com> writes:

    >> 2) field initializers: I think that it is important for krb5 to
    >> keep supporting MSVC.  I would defer changing this until MS
    >> releases a compiler w/support for this.  (I am not sure as to the
    >> current status and future support for this from MS.  I know that
    >> they had some post w/changes in the next compiler (to be released
    >> this year, IIRC), but I did not find it.)

    Simo> -1 on this, apparently MS has decided not to care for C99 so
    Simo> it would mean waiting forever. I would strongly suggest
    Simo> researching if mingw is a possible candidate, as MSVC is
    Simo> keeping us chained to a sub-optimal feature set and preventing
    Simo> better code.  (Also mingw allows for easy cross compiling on a
    Simo> Linux machine so that you don't have to run windows just to
    Simo> hand out binaries, not sure how much work would be necessary
    Simo> to allow proper cross compiling but that too would be really
    Simo> helpful).


I would not recommend  mingw for KFW builds.

I might come to recommend automake and libtool as a Windows build
strategy using msvc as a compiler by the 1.13 time frame.  However for
something intended to be used by a lot of Windows native applications,
I'd feel uncomfortable depending on mingw.  My areas of nervousness
include debugability, interactions with code signing and manifest
generation as well as interactions with Windows exception handling.

I'd appreciate hearing from others who would like to continue supporting
msvc why they believe this is important.

--Sam