Re: Macros and K&R

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at airs dot com>]

Andrew Cagney <ac131313@cygnus.com> writes:

> > The canonical operating systems to think about are pre-Solaris SunOS,
> > and HP/UX.  Both ship with a K&R C compiler (although I admittedly
> > don't know about the most recent versions of HP/UX).  Both are
> > reasonably widely used.  Both come on machines easily powerful enough
> > to compile gcc.
> 
> 
> In the case of both those systems.  Pre-build GCCs are available for
> download.

If you download binaries, then it doesn't matter how you build GCC--it
could require all sorts of special tools.  But for some people, it
does matter how you build it, which is why building GCC requires only
/bin/sh and make.

> > I recommend a simple approach for the binutils: stick to K&R until gcc
> > changes.
> 
> 
> GCC came out in '85?  There are probably people on this list that are
> younger than GCC so I'm not sure, from a developer point of view, this
> is the simplest option.

The binutils came out in '87, but I don't see how that is relevant.

My point is simple: convince the GCC team to switch.  If the GCC team
feels that they should stick to K&R C, then the binutils team should
also.  If the GCC team thinks it is OK to switch, then it is OK for
the binutils to switch.

Since GCC is the larger project, I can't imagine any reason for the
binutils team to act ahead of the GCC team on this issue.

Ian