Re: malloca.c non-top variable declaration

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Simon,

> There is no -Werror in use and the c99 module doesn't help

So it has no way of supporting ISO C 99.

> I think gnulib doesn't really support gcc 2.95

Indeed. gcc 2.95.3 is more than 23 years old [1].

The only sensible thing you can do with this compiler is to build
a newer GCC, such as gcc 4.0.4.

> but for bootstrapping
> reasons I think it do make sense to support some ancient distribution
> and make things work on it.

No, this would be pointless effort. What makes more sense, with such an
ancient compiler, is to build only source code from 2001-2011. Such as
  - gcc 4.0.4,
  - gnulib from 2011,
  - etc.

> Perhaps leaving the patch in the mailing
> list archive is sufficient, for others to integrate in their project if
> they care.  Eventually we could have some ./bootstrap --c89 flag to
> automatically patch gnulib source code for concerns like this?  I
> understand the desire to not be limited by C89 in the canonical source
> code in gnulib.  Patches like this could be carried in the official
> gnulib git repository too, maintained on a voluntary basis for people
> who care about C89 compatibility.

Pointless effort again, in my opinion. You can maintain a forked branch
of Gnulib elsewhere. But it won't be easy, because
  1) Gnulib makes use of C99 __VA_ARGS__ in a couple of places.
  2) $ ./gnulib-tool --extract-dependents c99 | grep -v tests | wc -l
     62

Really, you are better off picking a gnulib from 2011 or 2015, for such
things.

Bruno

[1] https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-2.95.3/