On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 03:55:02PM +0400, Alexander V. Lukyanov wrote:
> I have put a prerelease at ftp://ftp.yars.free.net/lftp/devel.

Asked someone in debian/potato to try this out; the static initializer
test failed.

Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.95.2/specs
gcc version 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)

(I don't know when this was fixed in gcc.)

What kind of a cap is this putting on C++ compatibility?  That is, how
new does a person's compiler have to be to compile lftp?  (Is this
commonly supported in older, non-GCC compilers?)

I'm not suggesting this be changed, necessarily; just that we *know* what
restrictions are being put on compiling, make them explicit, and take
advantage of them.  For example, if we require a feature only typically
well-supported in compilers newer than 1.5 years, then STL, exceptions,
etc. are probably not technically out of bounds (though there may be other
reasons not to use exceptions, at least.)

If this is an isolated bug (that tends to work in other compilers), we
should still figure out where the line is--how new a compiler (and likewise,
libc++) is expected to be to run new lftp releases.

I think that if people aren't willing to upgrade their compiler, it's OK for
them to be stuck with older versions of other software.  Occasionally
releasing a stable version, saying "from now on, these C++ features are
required and if you don't have them, stick with this version" and moving on
helps a lot, or you end up with the problems Vim has--endless backwards
compatibility (which actually goes to efforts to compile on C compilers so
old they don't handle local initializations properly.)

What's your take on this?

-- 
Glenn Maynard

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