Move Parrot to C99 (subset)

[Christoph Otto]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: parrot-dev-bounces at lists.parrot.org [mailto:parrot-dev-bounces at lists.parrot.org] On Behalf Of
> Joshua Juran
> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 05:22
> To: Michael Hind
> Cc: parrot-dev at lists.parrot.org
> Subject: Re: Move Parrot to C99 (subset)
> 
> On Dec 30, 2010, at 3:39 AM, Michael Hind wrote:
> 
> > I totally agree with this.
> >
> > One of the problems I have having in configure is that OpenGL on
> > Ubuntu 10.10 uses a lot of long long types and consequently displays
> > errors as there are no compatible types in parrot.  I know there has
> > been discussion to move this out, but it needs resolution.
> >
> > I don't know if MSVC allows C++ type comments (//) (it should of
> > course, but who knows), but that is a minor issue.  As I understand
> > it, MSVC is the main reason we have not moved to the C99 standard
> > long ago, so yes any subset that it understands, should be
> > incorporated.
> >
> > I don't know if any other C compilers that are needed to build
> > parrot are restricted to C89, Sun/Oracle? - can anyone clarify this.
> 
> Metrowerks C 2.4.1 (for classic Mac OS) supports C++ line comments and
> long long.  Library functions aren't a major issue, since anything
> missing can be written.
> 
> Josh
> 

Supporting C89 plus an enumerated subset of the C99 that MSVC supports sounds like a good idea, provided we don't lose support for any other useful compilers.  Let's list the needed features (snprintf and long long so far) and make sure they're supported by all of the compilers we want to be able to build Parrot with (gcc, msvc, icc, others?).  Any volunteers?

Christoph