[ofiwg] ofiwg item: supporting other OS's

[Jeff Hammond]

On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 11:26 AM, Jason Gunthorpe <
jgunthorpe at obsidianresearch.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 11:13:09AM -0800, Jeff Hammond wrote:
> >    Does libfabric assume C99?  MSVC is not a C99 compiler and never will
> >    be, according to every source I've ever seen
>
> Apparently soon you'll be able to use clang as the language front end
> on windows:
>
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/21/microsoft_promises_clang_for_windows_in_november_visual_c_update/
>
> I shared that link in my email.  I guess you stopped reading after the
first paragraph :-)


> The point, apparently, is to fix the historically bad language support in
> MSVC++.
>
> Also, clang and gcc will both natively target windows now, and IIRC,
> there is even a way to just build windows DLLs straight from Linux
> with clang, so you can integrate with test infrastructure etc.
>
> Also, FWIW, RH supplies gcc 4.9 as an option on all their platforms
> now. Supporting a 'system' compiler is a really old fashioned
> idea. Use a good compiler on all platforms.
>

Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude here, but I cannot help myself to not use
the following meme.  I know Squyres will enjoy it :-)

[image: Inline image 1]

I used to support Blue Gene systems as my day job.  Just "use a good
compiler" was not a trivial statement.  Upgrading to a newer GCC required
building a patched version of a good portion of the GNU toolchain.
Eventually, Clang/LLVM became supported, but it was a multi-year effort by
one of the smartest people I know.

While I no longer have any problem getting great compilers for every
machine I care about, I am not willing to throw people under the bus just
because they dare to use a specialize platform.  libfabric should build
with the platform compiler on every platform it supports i.e. not require
users to port a new compiler.

>    Given the choice between limiting libfabric to a subset of C99 and not
> >    supporting Windows, I vote for C99 100 times out of 100.
>
> C99? C11 is where it's at now :)
>
> I responded on this topic off-list.

Jeff



-- 
Jeff Hammond
jeff.science at gmail.com
http://jeffhammond.github.io/
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