Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 2/2] Require compilers to support C17.

From: Anton Khirnov <anton@khirnov.net>
To: FFmpeg development discussions and patches <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org>
Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 2/2] Require compilers to support C17.
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 10:50:30 +0100
Message-ID: <170729943020.8914.10821872629310998047@lain.khirnov.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAHGibzGn59O+nXZ0h84v+GBTvf6+Smi1dg3veP4=pKh=L3RFsA@mail.gmail.com>

Quoting Devin Heitmueller (2024-02-05 21:40:43)
> On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 3:31 PM Anton Khirnov <anton@khirnov.net> wrote:
> >
> > Quoting Devin Heitmueller (2024-02-05 21:13:22)
> > > On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 2:59 PM Anton Khirnov <anton@khirnov.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > It should be available in all relevant modern compilers and will allow
> > > > us to use features like anonymous unions.
> > >
> > > Is everybody on board with the implications for this patch in terms of
> > > platforms we allow building on?  For example, the gcc on Centos7
> > > doesn't support C17, and that isn't *that* old of a platform.
> >
> > According to Wikipedia, it's almost 10 years old. That counts as *that*
> > old in my book. If someone really needs current ffmpeg on such a
> > platform, they can still build their own compiler or cross-compile.
> 
> Another way to look at it is that it's what all Centos users used
> until Centos8 was shipped in September 2019 (i.e. less than five years
> ago).
> 
> Now I know that developers *LOVE* to use the latest whizbang language
> features,

Could we please not have these kinds of caricatures in here? It's not
helpful.

Not to mention anonymous unions were standardized in C11 and widely
available for many years (possibly decades) before that, so it's hardly
a 'latest whizbang feature'.

> but there's a reason that many projects choose to have
> relatively old minimum language versions.
> 
> Now, again, if the developer community all agree that it makes sense
> to stop supporting an operating system that was shipping as recently
> as five years ago, then so be it.  But this sort of deprecation
> shouldn't simply be the result of a single developer deciding he wants
> to use anonymous unions (or some other C17 feature) and thus we drop
> support for a bunch of operating system versions.

In case you missed it, I didn't just randomly send this out of the blue,
it was discussed at the FOSDEM dev meeting (and before that on IRC and
the ML) and literally nobody in the room was against moving to C11.

-- 
Anton Khirnov
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