> Date: Wed, 10 May 2023 18:20:50 +0200 > From: David Brown via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> > > > Adding a flag to a Makefile is infinitely easier than fixing old > > sources in a way that they produce the same machine code. > > The suggestion has been - always - that support for old syntaxes be > retained. But that flag should be added to the makefiles of the 0.01% > of projects that need it because they have old code - not the 99.99% of > projects that are written (or updated) this century.
Percents don't count when you are the one who is in trouble. > > Exactly. We cannot reasonably expect that a compiler which needs to > > support 50 years of legacy code to be as safe as a compiler for a > > language invented yesterday afternoon. People who want a safe > > programming environment should not choose C as their first choice. > > We cannot expect a /language/ with a 50 year history to be as safe as a > modern one. But we can expect a /compiler/ released /today/ to be as > safe as it can be made /today/. Not if the compiler should support legacy code, we can't. Anyway, we are repeating ourselves.
