Re: building with C89 host compiler

[Justin Cormack <justin%specialbusservice.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Antoine LECA <antoine.leca.1%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>> I still think that being able to build tools with a C89 compiler is
>> a worthwhile goal.
>
> In case I wasn't clear enough: my previous post was NOT intented as a
> complaint to have Interix support in tools/compat; rather a hint that
> not having C99 support on the host libc is a pain.
>
> I can add that I think that pain is increasing over time.
>
> So while I agree that the goal is worthwhile, I believe that it is going
> against the ease given by assuming C99 conformance.
>
> Now from this discussion, I should agree with you and Kamil that it
> really boils down to add (several) support functions to libnbcompat.a
> (for my experience, at least the mbrtowc family, and the whole *printf
> family, to be able to use C99 modifiers like %zu or %td.)
>
> Of course, you really should request long long support in addition to
> C89, because otherwise there are no way be able to even start: in MINIX
> we tried a long time to cope with the lack of 64-bit integers, but when
> the project moved to NetBSD, the unavoidable need for long long was
> clear and not discussed.

It is fine to add functions to libnbcompat, but it is also helpful to
have platforms that run (at least occasional) build tests. I do (rump)
cross build tests that exercise the toolchain, but mainly on
relatively recent BSDs and Linux, while Solaris gets tested
occasionally. Since the C++ requirement for recent gcc, bootstrapping
from a minimal system is quite a bit harder, although pcc is
improving. It would be good to know which platforms people are
thinking of.

We should add a note about the requirement for long long support.

Justin