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

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  > > Would you please show an example for the pointer on a 64-bit platform?
  > > And one for `long long'?  I'd like to see what sort of usage would
  > > have this problem.

  > The earlier reallocarray example was one such example.

Thanks.  I remember that example, but I wasn't sure it was an example
of this topic and these remarks.  These examples enable us to make the
question at hand more concrete.

With these examples, old programs that worked fine on 32-bit
platforms, moving to a 64-bit platform could cause the program to fail
grossly.  That is a bug in an abstract sense.

But as long as the user keeps running it on the same 32-bit platform,
which is quite likely to happen, it is not a bug in a concrete,
practical sense.  On that same 32-bit platform, the program would
never fail, except artificially if a newer GCC version refuses to
compile it.

So I think the most useful behavior for GCC in these cases is to give
just a warning when compiling for a 32-bit platform, and give an error
when compiling for a 64-bit platform.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)