At Sat, 18 Oct 2025 23:01:29 -0400, Andrew Cagney <andrew.cagney%gmail.com@localhost> wrote: Subject: Re: Fixing configure failures from newer gcc > > Except programs, are not written to a language standard. They are > written to a combination of the available compilers, libraries, and > coding standards. And that is a constantly moving target that doesn't > say in the --std=cNN box. That's often quite true, but! :-) Yes, most legacy code is indeed written to work with a range of compilers that might default to a range of different language standards. These new compiler errors though show that lots of "C" code still hasn't met a newer compiler like GCC since 14.x or Clang since about 15.x. So that range actually has an implied maximum level that's now becoming visible. Indeed if one considers that new language levels will continue to drop backward compatability even more then that maximum is always going to be there and clearly it has always been there too -- we just didn't know exactly where it was before. So now we need to tell the compiler to back off by giving it the appropriate "-std=" option, i.e. make the maximum language level explicit. Note too that unlike the attempts to use "-Wno-*" the use of "-std=" is fully portable across all newer versions of any compilers that were previously used to build such legacy code within the pkgsrc. Perhaps more importantly "-std=" is also future proof -- it should still work with the next unreleased version of these compilers too (at least until the compiler vendors give up on whatever oldest level is needed for the oldest code). That should be a ways off though. The safe global default for pkgsrc is likely "-std=gnu99" since that's what the NetBSD compilers (and many other system compilers) have offered by default for years now. More recently NetBSD's compiler has defaulted to gnu17 and so even that might be a safe default. -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods%acm.org@localhost> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods%robohack.ca@localhost> Planix, Inc. <woods%planix.com@localhost> Avoncote Farms <woods%avoncote.ca@localhost>
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