Hacker News Reader

Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

I support a lot of the language cleanup, but goddamnit can we either a.) bring pitchforks to Redmond to get proper VS support, b.) bring pitchforks to $CLANG_DEV_LOCATION to get proper Windows support for Clang thus obviating the need for a, or c.) write some shims so that C11-ish features are available in Windows.

There is a world outside of Linux and mobile.

View on HN

There is indeed a world outside of Linux and mobile, and most of that world doesn't have a problem working with C99 and C11. Windows is - as with many other things - the exception, and it's getting tiresome.

There's no way Windows developers are going to stop using Visual Studio - and rightly so, because it's a very good IDE. So there are basically three things Microsoft could do to resolve this situation and let Windows developers make use of modern C code:

1. Update their C89 compiler to a newer C standard. This is unlikely, and probably a lot of work for Microsoft (I'm guessing they'll be removing the C compiler from one of the next releases of Visual Studio).

2. Add support for essential C99/C11 features to their C++ compiler, such as designated initializers. This would still force us to compile our C as C++ and do nasty things like casting the return type of malloc, but it might be the easiest solution.

3. Switch to a modern, open source C compiler like Clang. I would be very surprised if Microsoft would do anything like this (else IE would be using WebKit already).

So we're basically forced to either butcher our C code to make it compile as C++, or write C89. Or drop MSVC support, making our projects difficult for Windows developers to work with.

Or choose the path of least resistance and use C++. Even if it is C-like C++. Not that I wouldn't like to have MS to support C99 and C11 though.

That may work for developers writing their own projects on Windows, but presents a problem when using other people's code.

Not many developers on Linux and OSX are going to hold out on using new features just to coddle Windows users.

So Linux does not have C++ those day? (Just kidding.) But C++ definitely matches C feature for feature, even tough the way or doing things are not always the same.

And what about QNX, Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, VxWorks and many others?

Not everyone is allowed to use modern versions of clang and gcc.

That was exactly the case at my last job. We used only a small subset of C99, primarily stdint.h.

From a technical perspective, though, the latest standards are easily usable on AIX. IBM has done a good job of keeping XLC up-to-date, and it has supported C11 since May.[1]

[1] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/support-i...

I think the most problematic is HP-UX and all the non UNIX based systems, specially the ones where the vendor's compiler is the one to use.

Another option is the Intel C(++) compiler, integrated directly into Visual Studio.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your language but I don't see how pitchforks will help. There are simply not enough Windows users among clang/llvm developers and none of the companies that are invested in clang/llvm use it for Windows technology. If Windows users want a working C/C++ compiler they will have to stand up and actually contribute, but that seems to be a foreign concept to many of the developers coming from that platform (purely anecdotal and I have no real evidence). It is not like anybody is actively trying to make clang/llvm not work under Windows.

On the other side of the fence Microsoft has repeatedly stated that they are not interested in supporting more of ISO C than they already do and want to focus on C++ (even going so far as to recommend the C++ compiler for developing C code). And apparently that "focus" on C++ hasn't even helped them overtake or even get even with their free (beer and freedom both) alternatives. That goes a long way to show in what state their compiler division is and so I wouldn't even bet on getting anything halfway decent should they commit to C11. That is not to say that there are highly competent people on that team, but there is simply to much to do and too many old mistakes to rectify first.

>they are not interested in supporting more of ISO C

>* For C++11 conformance, we're interested in implementing the C99 Standard Library

Source: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/...

According to Herb Sutter only the parts that are a subset of the C++ standard: http://herbsutter.com/2012/05/03/reader-qa-what-about-vc-and...

Nothing is more infuriating than half-baked support that makes you run around with feature tables and obscure seemingly arbitrary coding guidelines ("use only this subset of this feature", "if you use this thing, remember to have a workaround for VS").

I assume that part of the cruft is having to support Windows ABI, etc. Is there a straightforward way to add that to Clang/LLVM? Then MS could stop working on C compilers and instead continue improving their already-amazing IDE tools.

Anyone here able to comment on what difficulties the VS team faces?

I don't know if Microsoft will ever have enough C-only customers to actually get around to supporting C11. They do a bad enough job of supporting larger subsets of their customers (like .NET developers).

c) sort of exists in the form of https://github.com/libav/c99-to-c89, although currently it only supports the subset of c99 that FFmpeg uses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com