Re: Fast request for version checking....

Oops! RMohan(at)arbinet(dot)com ("Mohan, Ross") was seen spray-painting on a wall:
> I have 2.53, yes.
>
> But, I am going to rebuild and re-AC this, so need
> to build m4 (1.4.3) in order to get to 2.59 of AConf.
>
> Any reasons to strongly advocate or avoid forcing
> compiler into strict ANSI/C99 or ISO C mode? I had
> to do that to get m4 to compile. I'd like to stay
> on a single track (ANSI compliant or not) with all
> builds.
>
> An RTFM pointer to a doc would be more than ample,
> if such explanation already exists!

There is no such explanation/document to be found, as the different
pieces of software you are building are managed by completely
independent groups of people.

PGDG (the folks responsible for PostgreSQL) are, at least at the Core
level, a disjoint set from the set of developers associated with FSF
m4.

There is little reason to expect any comprehensive sort of consistency
of the manner you suggest, nor that it is particularly useful, either.

- When you're looking at something like PostgreSQL, where there needs
to be some intimacy with system level details, it's quite likely
that there will need to be some weird things turned on.

For instance, you're liable to find a need to enable thread safety
on platforms like AIX and Solaris, even though that can Lead To
Certain Complications.

- In contrast, m4 is being used for relatively simple purposes, during
the build process, so that "weirdities" like threading are pretty
well irrelevant to compiling m4.

Indeed, it would be quite appropriate for an m4 build to use pretty
"anal-retentively" standards-compliant options, and it might even be
appropriate to ignore platform-specific stuff like optimization.
After all, the m4 code only runs at compile time, and if that slows
down a bit, or even a lot, that will not have any effect on the
efficiency of the resulting PostgreSQL binaries.

While it would be convenient if all software projects played by
exactly the same set of "how to use compiler options" rules, it is
completely unrealistic to expect this.
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