This is somewhat off-topic. Perhaps the GCC development team should
consider making this __GNUC__ stuff more clarified in the GCC Manual.
Now, this __GNUC__ stuff appears to appear only in the CPP Manual
(section 3.7.2). And the definition of similar macros such as __GFORTRAN__
and __GNUG__ may need to be further explained in this vein. Currently,
__GFORTRAN__ means "The GNU Fortran compiler defines this." Should it
rather mean "This is a GNU Fortran-complaint compiler", to be consistent
with the meaning of __GNUC__? And, for example, should there be
__GNUG_MINOR__ and __GNUG_PATCHLEVEL__ too?
Interestingly, there is a __VERSION__ macro ("which describes the version
of the compiler in use"). There is some discussion in this thread on whether
these macros are defined in the preprocessor or the compiler proper. If
these macros are processed by the preprocessor, and the C, C++, Fortran,
etc compilers all share CPP, then how would the preprocessor report the
correct version of the compiler in use? It somehow checks with the
compiler to see whether it is C or Fortran, and then report the appropriate
version of the compiler?
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