[Python-Dev] C99

Ned Deily nad at python.org
Sat Aug 6 11:36:38 EDT 2016


On Aug 6, 2016, at 01:16, Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull.stephen.fw at u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:
> I may be talking through my hat here, but Apple has been using LLVM
> for several major releases now.  They seem to be keeping the GCC
> frontend stuck at 4.2.1, though.  So just because we've been using GCC
> 4.2.1 on Mac, including on buildbots, doesn't mean that there is no
> C99 compiler available on Macs -- it's quite possible that the
> available clang frontend does already support the C99 features we
> would use.  I suppose that might mean fiddling with the installer
> build process as well as the buildbots.

Sorry, I wasn't clear; I did not mean to imply there is no C99 compiler available from Apple for OS X.  On current OS X releases, clang is the default and only supported compiler.  I was bringing up the example of the impact on building on older releases with the supported build tools for those releases where clang is either not available or was too immature to be usable.  As I said, there are a number of solutions to that problem - building on newer systems with deployment targets, installing third-party compilers, etc.

But the point I was trying to make is that, by changing the language requirement, we will likely have an effect on what platforms (across the board) and versions we support and we should take that into account when making this decision.  It may be the right decision, in balance, to drop support for some of these but we shouldn't do it by accident.

--
  Ned Deily
  nad at python.org -- []



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