Re: How can Autoconf help with the transition to stricter compilation defaults?

[Zack Weinberg <zack@owlfolio.org>]

Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> writes:
> My gut feeling is that Autoconf should just determine the necessary
> options to get compatible behaviour out of these modern compilers, at
> least for the purpose of running configure tests.  For example, Autoconf
> should probably build the AC_CHECK_FUNC programs using gcc's
> -fno-builtin option

I fear this will cause more problems than it solves.  Messing with
compiler options inside a configure script has a track record of
clashing with “outer” build tools that expect to be able to dictate the
options.

> It saddens me to see so much breakage happening in "modern C", a
> language that has (until now) a long history of new language features
> being carefully introduced to avoid these sort of problems.

I don’t exactly _disagree_ with this.  Quite a few of the compatibility-
breaking changes going into C2x (promoting ‘bool’ to a true keyword, for
instance, and changing the meaning of an empty argument list in a
function declaration) strike me as unnecessary churn.  However, the
specific set of changes that are under discussion right now—removal of
implicit function declarations, implicit int, and old-style function
definitions from the _default_ language accepted by C compilers—I’m very
much in favor of, because they make life significantly easier for people
writing _new_ code.  It’s not healthy for a language to always
prioritize old code over new code.

(Yes, you _can_ opt in to all three of those changes now, but you have
to type a bunch of -W options.  With my day job hat on, I am very much
looking forward to a day where ‘cc test.c’ errors out on implicit
function declarations, because then I won’t have to _explain_ implicit
function declarations, and why they are dangerous, to my students
anymore.)

>> p.s. GCC and Clang folks: As long as you’re changing the defaults out
>> from under people, can you please also remove the last few predefined
>> user-namespace macros (-Dlinux, -Dunix, -Darm, etc) from all the
>> -std=gnuXX modes?
>
> Meh, even though these macros are a small thing I don't accept the
> "things are breaking anyway so let's break even more things" attitude.

Getting rid of these is another change that will make life easier for
people writing new code.

zw