bob@dallnix.uucp (Bob Best) (05/05/90)
I compiled the latest (dbz support) version of C News using the recently ported GCC on SCO Xenix 386 2.2. After successfully running all regression tests and using the system without evident problems of any kind for over a week, I discovered in notebook/problems that the '-traditional' flag must be used if compiling with GCC. Since I did not use this flag, I have a couple questions: Is it safe to assume that this requirement has been eliminated? If not, can anyone give details of the specific problems referred to and how they are manifested? -- Bob Best bob@dhw68k.cts.com
geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) (05/06/90)
To quote the paragraph on ANSI C which immediately precedes the one on gcc in notebook/problems: Although we made an effort to be ANSI-C compatible, lack of access to a real ANSI C compiler limits our ability to do this. A secondary problem is that it's really very difficult to get code that is 100% acceptable to both ANSI C compilers and older compilers. Some issues inevitably got resolved in favor of current compilers, and may cause complaints from ANSI C compilers. We had too many complaints from people trying to compile C news with "gcc -ansi", due to the problems of making code acceptable to both Classic and ANSI (and alleged ANSI) compilers, so we backed out most of our attempts at explicit ANSI support. I take the view that one should always compile C news using a Classic compiler if possible, since that's what Henry and I have. (And no, gcc doesn't yet count as a ``real ANSI C compiler'', sorry.) -- Geoff Collyer utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu