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Date:      Thu, 28 May 1998 17:49:19 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Tony Kimball <alk@pobox.com>
To:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        nate@mt.sri.com
Subject:   Re: Fix for undefined "__error" and discussion of shared object versioning
Message-ID:  <199805282249.RAA03682@pobox.com>

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Quoth Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>:
> > My own concern would be the amount of code in third-party programs
> > that uses gccisms.
> 
> Very few programs *should* use gccisms.  If they do, they are broke
> since they won't build on other OS's compilers.

[ note redirect to chat ]

Various points:

  1 Non-portable != broken.  

  2 I'm amazed to see this coming from Nate "Java" Williams!  
    Gcc is the *platform*.  Gcc is what makes code portable, 
    not ANSI, which is merely an idea, and not a platform.

  3 People use gccisms because then they don't have to write asm, 
    which is much *less* portable.

  4 Are you planning on fixing them?  Egad, the number of ports!

> Better/faster/less buggy compiler with a much less restrictive Copyright
> seems like a win overall to me.

Remains to be seen, as far as I am concerned.  Various points:

  1 TenDRA should be compared to GCC 2.8.1, not 2.7.2.1.  

  2 GPL should not be a restriction in practice for anyone
    except someone who wants to retain source for a commercialization 
    of added-value back-end code generation under FreeBSD, since there
    are plenty of source-to-source compilers suitable as front-ends to 
    GCC.  Since the amount of money to be made doing this is a negative
    number, it's not a restriction in practice.
  





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