* David Brown: > So IMHO (and as I am not a code contributor to GCC, my opinion really > is humble) it is better to be stricter than permissive, even in old > standards. It is particularly important for "-std=c89", while > "-std=gnu89" is naturally more permissive. (I have seen more than > enough terrible code in embedded programs - I don't want to make it > easier for them to write even worse code!)
We can probably make (say) -std=gnu89 -fno-permissive work, in a way that is a bit less picky than -std=gnu89 -pedantic-errors today. And of course there's still -Werror, that's not going to go away. So if you are using -Werror=implicit-function-declaration today (as you probably should 8-), nothing changes for you in GCC 14. > I suspect (again with numbers taken from thin air) that the proportion > of C programmers or projects that actively choose C11 or C17 modes, as > distinct from using the compiler defaults, will be less than 1%. C99 > (or gnu99) is the most commonly chosen standard for small-systems > embedded programming, combining C90 libraries, stacks, and RTOS's with > user code in C99. So again, my preference is towards stricter > control, not more permissive tools. I don't think the estimate is accurate. Several upstream build systems I've seen enable -std=gnu11 and similar options once they are supported. Usually, it's an attempt to upgrade to newer language standards that hasn't aged well, not a downgrade. It's probably quite bit more than 1%. Thanks, Florian
