Happy April Fools' Day! In the spirit of the day, I've done a brief survey of humor in other FOSS projects, and how they could be used as inspiration for fun features in GCC.
* Emacs: The etc/ folder in the emacs sources has plenty of humorous material in it, most obviously, etc/JOKES (although, some of the jokes there can be kind of cringe). Emacs also has games included in it, such as Tetris: https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/fun-games-in-emacs If emacs can have games in it, why can't GCC bring back its "play nethack on undefined behavior" option? * glibc: glibc has some joke functions in it, such as strfry: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4403 ...or memfrob: https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Obfuscating-Data.html#Obfuscating-Data Perhaps GCC could offer builtins for these functions? i.e., __builtin_strfry() and __builtin_memfrob() * clang: clang has a flag called -fheinous-gnu-extensions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19367572/what-does-fheinous-gnu-extensions-option-do It allows for compiling code such as this: https://opensource.apple.com/source/clang/clang-318.0.45/src/tools/clang/test/Sema/heinous-extensions-on.c.auto.html In GCC, such a flag is unnecessary, as such casts in inline assembly are already allowed. Thus, attempting to use the flag with actual GCC results in the following error message: gcc: error: unrecognized command-line option '-fheinous-gnu-extensions'; did you mean '-fno-ms-extensions'? However, I've thought it might be fun to special-case the error message for this specific flag: maybe GCC could have a unique message such as "gcc: error: GNU extensions are never heinous!" just as an easter egg for this flag? * sudo: sudo is notable for having configure options that will cause it to insult you when you mistype your password: https://askubuntu.com/questions/837558/where-are-sudos-insults-stored Imagine if GCC had similar functionality where it would insult you when providing compile warnings and/or errors? What might it say? * gdb: gdb has a song: https://www.gnu.org/music/gdb-song.en.html Perhaps GCC could have a song as well? Anyways, just some fun food for thought on this day of foolishness; please don't take these suggestions too seriously (unless you want to). Happy hacking! Eric Gallager
