Re: emacs-28 9c222b9: Port to C compilers that lack size-0 arrays

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

On 12/3/21 12:01, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Emacs still did compile on those platforms before your changes.

Actually the Emacs compile failed on both platforms, with many 
diagnostics, before my changes today. You're correct that the 
size-zero-array part of those changes was not needed to unbreak the two 
builds. Still, other builders may run into other less-commonly-used 
platforms that do not support this GNU C extension.


>> there's a reasonable chance it won't work on less-commonly-used
>> compilers and there's little point to taking that risk when the fix is
>> so simple.
> 
> That's okay, but such cleanup changes should be done on master, not on
> the release branch during a pretest.  The time for cleanups on the
> release branch has come and gone.  (And we don't support MSVC builds
> for a very long time now.)

Oh, I didn't know that Emacs builds with Microsoft compilers were no 
longer supported. Live and learn.... I suppose at some point any 
remaining references to MSVC could be removed from the Emacs source, if 
only to prevent further confusion in this area. Of course that'd be a 
low-priority cleanup.

Anyway, the size-zero-array patch wasn't intended to be a mere cleanup 
change; it was a fix to avoid a portability regression in Emacs 28 with 
respect to this Standard C constraint. But if you'd rather move the 
patch to the master branch, feel free; or let me know and I'll do it.