[quohort]

Perhaps the solution is also to reign in the language standard to support stricter use cases. For example, what if there was a constant-time { ... }; block in the same way you have extern "C" { ... }; . Not only would it allow you to have optimizations outside of the block, it would also force the compiler to ensure that a given block of code is always constant-time (as a security check done by the compiler).

[munificent]

> Perhaps the solution is also to reign in the language standard to support stricter use cases.

Here's a nine-year-old comment from the author asking for exactly that:

https://groups.google.com/g/boring-crypto/c/48qa1kWignU/m/o8...

[fuhsnn]

That thread already spawned a GCC-wiki page https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/boringcc, with a quote in bold:

>The only thing stopping gcc from becoming the desired boringcc is to find the people willing to do the work.

And frankly, nine years is enough time to build a C compiler from scratch.