Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/01/29/07:59:30
Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:
>On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Dan wrote:
>> I suppose you cut out my comment about the long wait for proper ANSI
>> complaince because?
>Because you didn't explain what did you mean exactly, and I didn't want
>to comment on something that I didn't understand. I use GCC on
>different platforms since version 1.4.0, which was about 10 years ago,
Not posible unless this is 1999. The X3J11 commitee's standard was not
formally adopted until 1989. We're short 2 years by my judgement.
And in 1994 [I think] the ISO amendments were made.
>and it was always ANSI-compatible since the first day I've seen it.
>(I'm talking >about ANSI C, not ANSI C++, of course). In those days,
I hope so, since ANSI C++ doesn't exist yet, the standard is only being
proposed, not accepted to date.
>even Turbo C was not 100% ANSI-compliant.
Again, there was no ANSI standard 10 years ago, only a commitee to
form one since 84[?], I think.
Nope. GCC, has not always been 100% fully ANSI complaint, there were
"features" that made it act differently. Read the docs on the GCC
updates line through the times, Often and I mean very often, bug XX
fixed to aquire more ANSI conformance, etc.. was written.
>> In that case, GNU C definately looses out since Borland's products
>> are only coded by a few employees and GNU CC is coded by the world.
>No, you need to only count the dedicated programmers, not the
>contributors. Otherwise, you need to also count all the people who
>reported the bugs (since debugging is part of development).
Did they debug or just find bugs? There is a difference. Dedicated
programmers? You call someone who looks through those sources, having
not coded it themself, to find a bug not dedicated? then to make the
patch and send it in? I'd call that dedicated.
>> No there isn't, GNU C sources have been under the GPL for some time
>> and it still has bugs. Just look at the gnu.* hierarchy to read up on
>> 3 or 4 of them a week.
>*Any* software has bugs, no matter how long it is developed. In fact,
>one of the definitions of software is ``lines of codes with bugs'' ;-).
What??
That is exactly what I said, and you said I was wrong. Albeit I made
the distinction large software packages instead of any software since
I'm sure there have been small utilities written without bugs.
>The difference is that in the case of GCC, DJGPP and the rest of free
>software, I usually get a solution or a work-around for any problem in
>a few days, whereas with commercial products I must wait much longer,
>and sometimes I'm told I'm on my own.
This is true, however, technically you could patch the comercial
software yourself with a debugger.
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