Re: strict C99 (was: problem with anything to do with gnulib on Solaris UNIX)

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Dennis,

Dennis Clarke wrote:
> Minor issue on ye old sparcv9 Solaris 10 where the compile of diffutils
> goes perfect in strict C99 mode. The testsuite fails when it tries to go
> after the gnulib-tests and that stops the show.

Most GNU programs are not plain ISO C applications, but rather POSIX
applications. For instance, many GNU source packages have a
  #include <unistd.h>
here or there. Since <unistd.h> is not specified by ISO C [1], but by
POSIX [2], it makes no sense to attempt to build such programs in strict
C99 mode.

In particular, GNU diff opens its files through open(), not fopen(), and
is thus not an ISO C application.

Your build thus could already have failed way earlier than in the gnulib-tests.

For values of $CC and $CPPFLAGS that are known to work, see
https://gitlab.com/ghwiki/gnow-how/-/wikis/Platforms/Configuration

Bruno

[1] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3047.pdf
[2] 
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2018edition/basedefs/unistd.h.html