On Friday 15 April 2005 07:24 am, Hrvoje Niksic wrote: > Herold Heiko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > However there are still lots of people using Windows NT 4 or even > > win95/win98, with old compilers, where the compilation won't work > > without the patch. Even if we place a comment in the source file or > > the windows/Readme many of those will be discouraged, say those who > > do have a compiler but aren't really developers (yet) (for example > > first year CS students with old lab computer compilers). > > From my impressions of the Windows world, non-developers won't touch > source code anyway -- they will simply use the binary. > > The really important thing is to make sure that the source works for > the person likely to create the binaries, in this case you. Ideally > he should have access to the latest compiler, so we don't have to > cater to brokenness of obsolete compiler versions. This is not about > Microsoft bashing, either: at at least one point Wget triggered a GCC > bug; I never installed the (ugly) workaround because later versions of > GCC fixed the bug. > > Also note that there is a technical problem with your patch (if my > reading of it is correct): it unconditionally turns on debugging, > disregarding the command-line options. Is it possible to save the old > optimization options, turn off debugging, and restore the old options? > (Borland C seems to support some sort of "#pragma push" to achieve > that effect.) > > There are other possibilities, too: > > * Change the Makefile to compile the offending files without > optimization, or with a lesser optimization level. Ideally this > would be done by configure.bat if it detects the broken compiler > version. > > * Change the Makefile to simply not use optimization by default. This > is suboptimal, but would not be a big problem for Wget in practice > -- the person creating the binaries would use optimization in his > build, which means most people would still have access to an > optimized Wget.
i don't really like these two options and i don't think they're necessary when there is a freely downloadable microsoft compiler which works perfectly for us. > > Not yet, but I will certainly. Nevertheless, I think the point is > > the "continue to support existing installation if possble" issue, > > after all VC6 is not free either, and at least one newer commercial > > VC version has been reported to compile without problems. Those, > > however, certainly don't support Win95, probably don't Win98/ME > > or/and NT4 either (didn't yet check though). > > You mean that you cannot use later versions of C++ to produce > Win95/Win98/NT4 binaries? I'd be very surprised if that were the > case! yes, this would be very weird. > > Personally I feel wget should try to still support that not-so-old > > compiler platform if possible, > > Sure, but in this case some of the burden falls on the user of the > obsolete platform: he has to turn off optimization to avoid a bug in > his compiler. That is not entirely unacceptable. i totally agree with hrvoje here. in the worst case, we can add an entry in the FAQ explaining how to compile wget with those buggy versions of microsoft cc. -- Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem... Mauro Tortonesi University of Ferrara - Dept. of Eng. http://www.ing.unife.it Institute of Human & Machine Cognition http://www.ihmc.us Deep Space 6 - IPv6 for Linux http://www.deepspace6.net Ferrara Linux User Group http://www.ferrara.linux.it
