Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 18:08:57 -0600 From: Nate Williams <nate@rocky.sri.MT.net> To: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), pst@shockwave.com, bde@freefall.freebsd.org, CVS-commiters@freefall.freebsd.org, cvs-sys@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/kern vnode_if.sh Message-ID: <199509120008.SAA04023@rocky.sri.MT.net> In-Reply-To: <199509112245.PAA02175@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> References: <9138.810856607@time.cdrom.com> <199509112245.PAA02175@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
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Rodney W. Grimes writes: Paul Traina writes: > Maybe it's time to ask the general question: > > Why do we care about non-ansi compilers? Jordan responds: > we should go to full c++ style prototypes and obey only those > sylististic conventions necessary to making things like `ctags' work. > That's about as far as I think it's necessary to go with "backwards > compatability" in source code. Rod's replies with: > Then you have not thought about the facts that the BSD source code > base is used in other OS's that do _not_ have a fully ansi compliant > compiler and are not going to be getting one any day soon. BSD source code is used, but making FreeBSD source code portable to legacy systems shouldn't be a goal IMHO. > I love the fact that I can take large hunks of BSD user land code and > haul them over to my discrepent old Domain/IX SR 9.1 system and compile > them up to make the system somewhat more palatable, and hell if I am > going to go port gcc to this thing :-(. My response to this is 'who cares'? We are not in the business of supporting Domain/IX SR 9.1, and a significant percentage of our time is spent maintaining this ability with no gain to FreeBSD. If a Domain/IX person wants to use BSD code, the 4.4lite and 4.4lite2 tapes are just as available to them as they are to us. If we've made fixes to the code, then it's my opinion that they can do the same thing we've done with a lot of code and back-port the changes. There is plenty enough work to go around without making more work by supporting pre-ANSI/C compilers. Nate
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