Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rwmj 457 days ago
The bad news is that C23 broke a lot of existing code[1]. We had to do a lot of work in Fedora to fix the resulting mess. [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-15/porting_to.html#c23
2 comments
fuhsnn 457 days ago
For the cases in linked doc, does adding -std=gnu17 to packages not suffice?

I would consider the union initializer change (require adding -fzero-init-padding-bits=unions for old behavior) much more hidden and dangerous, which is not directly related to ISO C23 standard.

link
rwmj 457 days ago
It's true that it does, yes. However that would still require changes to the build system. In any case for the vast majority of the packages we decided to fix (if you think this is a fix!) the code.
link
fuhsnn 457 days ago
>if you think this is a fix

I would count it as doing maintenance work for the upstream, kudos for doing this!

link
ForTheKidz 456 days ago
> Note that the bool type is not the same as int at ABI level,

Huh. Wonder what the benefits of that are. Bools being ints never struck me as a serious problem. I wonder if this catches people who accidentally assign rather than compare tho....

link