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by rawatson 4982 days ago
Clang, GCC, and Intel are all described as "mostly" supporting C99. This is unfortunate, and it would be nice to see them fully supported, but developer time is limited, and not all of C99's features are in high demand.

Unlike MSVC though, these compilers have included the extremely visible features -- things like inline variable declarations, designated initializers, and variable length arrays. I don't think Microsoft should implement C99 in full, but partial support would help students trying to learn C on Windows.
3 comments
jetti 4982 days ago
For students, they could use Pelles C (http://www.smorgasbordet.com/pellesc/) which has support for C99 and C11 and is free as well. There are well established alternatives to C99. At this point, Microsoft would be trying to play catch up which would take away from other areas of focus.
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pjmlp 4982 days ago
Just install mingw, which is even better for students given their usual lack of income.

Microsoft is not forbidding anyone else to develop C compilers.

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fafner 4982 days ago
I guess the difference between mostly for Clang and GCC and full for Sun Studio and IBM is the difference between having a PR department and being an open source project.

The important features are available http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html

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