Re: Bug#196800: flex mustn't assume stdint.h is available on allplatforms

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

reopen 196800
thanks

Cc'ed to debian-devel since this affects all software using flex.


On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 06:24:46PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> Hi,

Hi Manoj,

> On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 01:01:58 +0200, Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> said: 
> 
> > I got a compile error of mdk-1.0.1 (file mixlib/mix_scanner.c) on
> > NetBSD/sparc-1.5 that comes from the fact that 2.5.31
> > unconditionally adds an #include <stdint.h> but there is no
> > /usr/include/stdint.h on this platform. flex 2.5.4 generates a C
> > file that compiles without problems.
> 
> 	Flex no longer has support for non conforming implementations;
>  and thus no longer has support for platforms that so not have
>  stdint.h.  In other words, behaviour of flex scanners on non
>  conforming implementations is undefined. 
> 
> 	Please use flex-old for platforms where the implementation is
>  not up to date.

these platforms include platforms like Solaris 9 ...

> > Severity grave since this is a regression from 2.5.4 that generates
> > C files that don't compile on all platforms.
> 
> 	This is not a regression, this is moving away from a standard
>  which is 14 years old, to one which is merely 4 years old. 

Even gcc 3.3 doesn't fully support C99.

> 	Flex has also broken POSIX conformance, BTW, in favour of new
>  features; flex is now reentrant, and does not pollute use namespace. 

The new flex includes features that break existing (f)lex files.

The new flex creates C files that don't compile on many OS including the 
latest Solaris - IOW every software developer upgrading to the flex 
currently in unstable/testing silently drops support for many platforms.

I don't know what the people currently developing flex are smoking, but 
these changes are definitely not OK.

> 	manoj

cu
Adrian

BTW: I'm not subscribed to debian-devel.

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