From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Jan 30 2: 4:44 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mass.dis.org (dhcp45-21.dis.org [216.240.45.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6033537B400 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 02:04:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from mass.dis.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.dis.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g0UA4hb01286; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 02:04:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from msmith@mass.dis.org) Message-Id: <200201301004.g0UA4hb01286@mass.dis.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Dallas De Atley Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: __P macro question In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:15:27 PST." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 02:04:43 -0800 From: Michael Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I asked a question of our resident experts here at Apple and was > eventually directed to you by Jordan Hubbard. "I send you this for your consideration". G'day. 8) > My question was: What is the __P macro used for in all those > function declarations in the BSD libraries and do we still need it? It's used to hide function arguments from non-ANSI compilers. No, we don't still need it. > It was explained that this macro is used for pre-ANSI C compilers > and that while Darwin and thus Mac OS X compile with gcc 2.95, we retain > it in our code so that the diffs between our code and yours is small. > This enables the Darwin team to keep on top of changes between FreeBSD > and Darwin. That's not a bad reason, although the diffs are already pretty horrific. As a general rule, FreeBSD folk try to avoid gratuitous diffs where possible, hence __P() living on long after it should have died. > Is the __P macro still necessary? Are there pre ANSI C compilers > FreeBSD wishes to support or is this macro effectively benign but > useless? That would be a generous interpretation of the situation. Regards, Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message