C99 Features

[Nathaniel McCallum]

Is clang an option for you?

On Tue, 2015-06-16 at 01:54 -0700, Chris Hecker wrote:
> I still build on vs2008, for what it's worth.
> Chris
> On Jun 15, 2015 10:24 PM, "Greg Hudson" <ghudson at mit.edu> wrote:
> > On 06/15/2015 09:06 PM, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> > > So how about it? Can MIT start using C99 features?
> > 
> > There are four questions here:
> > 
> > 1. Can we reasonably require MSVC 2013 for the Windows build?  I 
> > don't
> > know of a compelling reason why we can't, but there may be reasons 
> > I
> > don't know about.
> > 
> > 2. Can we abandon MSVC for the Windows build in favor of mingw or 
> > clang,
> > in order to get VLA support?  I think the practical answer here is 
> > no,
> > in that we don't expect to commit the resources to investigate this
> > possibility in the near future.
> > 
> > 3. Should we allow MSVC-unsupported C99 features in code we don't
> > currently build on Windows?  (This includes the KDC, KDB library,
> > PKINIT, and everything related to kadmin including gssrpc.)  I 
> > don't
> > really feel strongly either way, but it doesn't buy us a lot to 
> > allow it
> > in just a few places, and the inconsistency could be confusing.
> > 
> > 4. Are there any C99 features we don't want to use, because they 
> > don't
> > mesh with our BSD KNF-inspired style or for other reasons?  Going 
> > over
> > the specific features you mentioned:
> > 
> > * Designated initializers and compound literals don't seem to 
> > present
> > any stylistic or practical issues.  VLAs also don't seem to present
> > issues except for the lack of MSVC support.
> > 
> > * Does _Bool present any issues if it creeps into public ABIs?  I 
> > found
> > http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/bool.html but it's from 2009, and 
> > might
> > be specific to the kernel.  It might also just be confusing to have
> > "krb5_boolean" and "bool" in the same code base when they aren't
> > generally the same size (krb5_boolean is a typedef for unsigned 
> > int).
> > 
> > * Our style guide discourages declaring variables in interior 
> > scope.
> > The justification (which predates my involvement) has to do with
> > debugging convenience and limiting function complexity; I 
> > personally
> > find that code is a little easier to read if it doesn't have type
> > declarations mixed in with statements.  If there are good reasons 
> > to
> > avoid interior scope declarations, those reasons may also apply to 
> > mixed
> > declarations and code.
> > http://k5wiki.kerberos.org/wiki/Coding_style/Practices#Local_variab
> > les
> > 
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> >