Re: Discussion about why GNU/Linux system upgrades cause old programs to break

Richard Stallman <[email protected]> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > > It wasn't broken back when Emacs 24.1 was released, or at least we
>   > > > weren't aware of that.  It's only the latest GCC releases quite
>   > > > arbitrarily decided that -std=gnu99 means to reject any program that
>   > > > does not strictly conforms to C99.  Previously, -std=gnu99, unlike
>   > > > -std=c99, always allowed useful deviations from the standard.
>   > > 
>   > > The latter sentence is interesting.  It implies that -std=gnu99 no
>   > > longer permits a useful deviation from the standard, but that's simply
>   > > not the case.
>   > > 
>   > > It no longer permits a certain deviation that was, through experience,
>   > > seen to be far more harmful than useful.
>
>   > IOW, you've redefined "useful" to suit the point you want to make.
>   > How does this add any useful insights to this discussion?
>
> What, _concretely_, was the change that you two are expressing
> different judgments about?  That is a factual matter, and we need
> to know those facts in order to think about the point of your
> disagreement.

GCC 14 considers certain K&R C constructs an error in C99 mode and
newer, whereas GCC up to 13 merely warned for them in those same modes.
See https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/porting_to.html#warnings-as-errors
including on details how to recover old behavior.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQECBAEWCgCqFiEE/uKz0RP8AKMWLWBhUsKUMB6ixJMFAmqCyAcbFIAAAAAABAAO
bWFudTIsMi41KzEuMTIsMiwyXxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25z
Lm9wZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXRGRUUyQjNEMTEzRkMwMEEzMTYyRDYw
NjE1MkMyOTQzMDFFQTJDNDkzEBxhcnNlbkBhYXJzZW4ubWUACgkQUsKUMB6ixJNO
uAEA++1jLVqB7oagxou0Q+5RdlkLsT3o81kYpp9M0ZtC8xMA/3DxqS5CV67tqGMk
zf72QmK/3J5CgVGJh8Z5HSPZ840D
=jO4I
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----