Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965312AbWJ2Rle (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:41:34 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965313AbWJ2Rle (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:41:34 -0500 Received: from nic.NetDirect.CA ([216.16.235.2]:64221 "EHLO rubicon.netdirect.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965312AbWJ2Rld (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:41:33 -0500 X-Originating-Ip: 72.57.81.197 Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:37:36 -0500 (EST) From: "Robert P. J. Day" X-X-Sender: rpjday@localhost.localdomain To: Adrian Bunk cc: LKML , Oleg Verych Subject: Re: why test for "__GNUC__"? In-Reply-To: <20061029171855.GF27968@stusta.de> Message-ID: References: <20061029120534.GA4906@martell.zuzino.mipt.ru> <20061029171855.GF27968@stusta.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Net-Direct-Inc-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-Net-Direct-Inc-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Net-Direct-Inc-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-2.54, required 5, autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.80, BAYES_20 -0.74) X-Net-Direct-Inc-MailScanner-From: rpjday@mindspring.com Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2531 Lines: 56 On Sun, 29 Oct 2006, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 04:17:51PM +0000, Oleg Verych wrote: > >... > > On 2006-10-29, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > >>... > > And if you can, please, help with development or bugs, not this. > > Cleanup of the kernel source is also a valuable task (and as a side > effect it even sometimes finds bugs). on that note, i realize that most of my postings are addressing nitpicky/aesthetic issues that don't actually *hurt* anything, but for someone who's clawing his way through the kernel code for the first time, a lot of it is unnecessarily confusing. for better or worse, i generally assume that whatever i'm looking at is there for a *reason* and i might spend some time puzzling over a bit of code until it finally dawns on me that it's just historical cruft that has no value. it's not a bug, it just doesn't *do* anything anymore. in my case, it's sometimes easier to spot things like this since i'm following along in some book, like r. love's "linux kernel development." so when he writes that the linux kernel is wedded to gcc, and yet i see tests for "__GNUC__" throughout the code, my little antenna stalks perk up a bit. having someone point out that ICC is also an option clarifies that briefly ... until i notice that ICC *also* defines __GNUC__ equal to 4, so i'm back to being confused. (as an aside, i downloaded the most recent ICC earlier today and did a test compile of the latest git pull. man, the stuff under scripts/ needs to be cleaned something fierce. :-) then there's the apparently historical stuff related to "signed" versus "__signed" versus "__signed__". sure, it all works, but it's needlessly complicated and verbose and might also lead someone astray trying to figure out what the rationale is. (and don't even get me started on semaphores. :-) in any event, i'm most emphatically *not* (yet) at the level where i'm going to be able to contribute bleeding-edge code. but i'm certainly capable of poring over the *existing* code and pointing out the places that might lead someone to mutter, "what the hell...?" maybe there's a better forum for me to make these observations. i'm open to suggestions. i've made a list of these observations and i'd be happy to send them to the right person. rday - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/