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Date:      Mon, 20 Nov 2023 05:15:07 +0100
From:      Robert Clausecker <fuz@freebsd.org>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Some K&R support to be removed from sys/cdefs.h
Message-ID:  <ZVrdSxgDZdepRZeL@fuz.su>
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfpZNaC6vqaLkOk2hbtFpmi6oLEVWNQgK2RTVofsJr%2Be9A@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CANCZdfpZNaC6vqaLkOk2hbtFpmi6oLEVWNQgK2RTVofsJr%2Be9A@mail.gmail.com>

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Hi Warner,

__STRING and __CONCAT are still needed with ANSI C to change evaluation order.
For example, I recently used __CONCAT in lib/libc/amd64/amd64_archlevel.h to
build function names from pieces.  ## cannot be used as that doesn't work if
the argument passed to the macro is in turn a macro.  Similar things apply to
__STRING.

Yours,
Robert Clausecker

Am Sun, Nov 19, 2023 at 08:44:49PM -0700 schrieb Warner Losh:
> Greetings,
> 
> I've had a long-term background project of cleaning up cdefs.h. So far it's
> all been things that are definitely unused. My next target are some
> specialized macros used to share code between K&R and ANSI-C compilers. K&R
> support in general will remain unchanged by this (any code using these
> macros that wants to continue will need to arrange for that in their build
> system). It may surprise many to learn with about 30 flags on the command
> line, one can compile unmodified code from the 80s that conforms to the V7
> K&R language spec (for some not terrible definition of conforms to a
> squishy spec).
> 
> The support I'm talking about is __P, __CONCAT, __STRING, defining __const,
> __inline, __signed and __volatile to nothing (only on some compilers) and
> sometimes defining const, inlined, signed and volatile to nothing when
> building when __STDC__ is not defined. This support was a transition from a
> time, predating the FreeBSD project for the most part, when numerous
> programs were specially curated so they could build on K&R compilers as
> well as the then newly emergent ANSI-C compilers that were appearing. The
> need to do this has long since past, so I'll be removing the pre-ansi-c
> build environment support for doing this specific thing.
> 
> I'll retain __P, __const, __signed and __volatile in __STDC__ environments,
> but have firm plans to remove them completely in a future round. I've
> already removed all __P usage from the tree (except sendmail). The others
> have a smattering of long-dead-hand-of-the-past usage in the tree (in libm,
> for example). I plan on leaving __inline unchanged because it has a
> secondary meaning. I suspect the only wide-spread one that will cause me
> grief is __P. All the others I see occasionally, but it's not pervasive
> like __P once was (and still is in older projects, shocking at that may be).
> 
> I have no plans on eliminating __CONCAT or __STRING. Their use is
> widespread in the tree is extensive, and where they are used, it's fine.
> There's no need to gratuitously churn things here. To the extent that pure
> K&R compilers are including our system headers, this will represent one
> more tiny step away from supporting that (as they are used in our headers).
> But such environments need their own headers anyway: all our headers use
> ANSI-C prototypes w/o __P protection.
> 
> As with all my cdefs cleanups, I'll do exp runs before I commit. For the
> more consequential ones, I plan on posting reviews. For the other myriad of
> completely unused and designed to tell gcc3 from gcc4 or gcc2 from gcc3,
> I'm just going to eliminate those.There's no point in keeping them once I
> make sure nothing in ports uses them.
> 
> I suspect nobody will care, except to cheer on the removal of
> no-longer-needed junk that makes cdefs.h hard to read. My timeline for this
> and other cleanup of cdefs.h is 'before 15 branches'.
> 
> Comments? Suggestions?
> 
> Warner

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