On Sun, 6 Jun 2021, Tom Honermann via Gcc-patches wrote: > These changes do not impact default gcc behavior. The existing -fchar8_t > option is extended to C compilation to enable the N2653 changes, and > -fno-char8_t is extended to explicitly disable them. N2653 has not yet been > accepted by WG14, so no changes are made to handling of the C2X language > dialect.
Why is that option needed? Normally I'd expect features to be enabled or disabled based on the selected language version, rather than having separate options to adjust the configuration for one very specific feature in a language version. Adding extra language dialects not corresponding to any standard version but to some peculiar mix of versions (such as C17 with a changed type for u8"", or C2X with a changed type for u8'') needs a strong reason for those language dialects to be useful (for example, the -fgnu89-inline option was justified by widespread use of GNU-style extern inline in headers). I think the whole patch series would best wait until after the proposal has been considered by a WG14 meeting, in addition to not increasing the number of language dialects supported. -- Joseph S. Myers jos...@codesourcery.com
