Re: coreutils 6.6 c89 build failures

[Jim Meyering]

Matthew Woehlke <address@hidden> wrote:
> Ok... would it be too much to ask for people making check-ins to first
> check that building with '-Wdeclaration-after-statement' is clean?
>
> remove.c bombs (*badly*) on non-c99 compilers (in my case, Solaris 5.7,
> but I know  that's not my only non-c99 platform); rm.c and shred.c also
> fail (if less spectacularly). Patch attached.

That is deliberate and documented.
Perhaps you didn't read (or forgot about) this part of the README file?

    ***********************
    Pre-C99 build failure
    -----------------------

    There is a new, implicit build requirement:
    To build the coreutils from source, you should have a C99-conforming
    compiler, due to the use of declarations after non-declaration statements
    in several files in src/.  There is code in configure to find and, if
    possible, enable an appropriate compiler.  However, if configure doesn't
    find a C99 compiler, it continues nonetheless, and your build will fail.
    If that happens, simply apply the included patch using the following
    command, and then run make again:

      cd src && patch < c99-to-c89.diff