Subject: Re: bug#9380: Compilation problems with coreutils-8.9

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:17:13 -0600

tag 9380 notabug
thanks

On 08/26/2011 08:58 AM, Rob McMahon wrote:
> I suspect you're going to say "upgrade to a more modern compiler" for
> most of these patches, but I had cause to install a later coreutils on
> an old box where this is not a viable option,

Thanks for the efforts; and hopefully by posting to the list, you have 
made life for someone else in the same situation.  However, you are 
correct that we will not take these patches into the upstream 
repository.  According to README, coreutils intentionally requires 
minimal C99 features from your compiler, one of which is supporting 
declaration-after-statement, and we are unwilling to take on the 
maintenance burden of uglifying the code just to support super-old C89 
compilers.

You may also want to try building the latest release (coreutils is 
currently at 8.12), although you will have to make the same manual C89 
patches on your own, as it will not be supported upstream.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org