Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Tue, Jul 11 2017, Junio C. Hamano jotted: > >> Just so that people do not misunderstand, it is not our goal to >> declare that now you need a fully C99 compiler to build Git. >> ... > > I think in the context of this desire Johannes Sixt's "Actually, I'm > serious [about let's compile with c++]"[1] should be given some more > consideration. > ... > Most of his patch is just avoiding C++ keywords, e.g. new -> wen, try -> > try_, this -> this_, namespace -> name_space, template -> templ > etc. It's going to be relatively easy to avoid a few keywords as > variable names, especially if we set up CI for it via Travis. I am not interested at all in building the binary I personally use with any C++ compiler, but I do not mind too much if people made it easier for other people to do so, but only if the did it the right way. I do like the fact that we call two things we are comparing with a pair of matching words, 'old' and 'new'. When two variables or fields have certain relationship, they should be named with words that have constrasting meaning that explains what they are. I would very much mind if a "let's make it buildable with C++" effort made the code compare 'old' and 'wen'. C++ is not that interesting to sacrifice the readability of the code. Don't invent non-words like wen; don't truncate a word like 'template' in the middle to 'templ' to make it unreadable and invite inconsistencies (e.g. "was it templ, templa, or something else?"). If a "let's make it buildable with C++" effort needs to avoid 'new', replace *both* 'old' and 'new' to a matching pair of words (perhaps 'pre' and 'post'? but it is making it worse by choosing a pair with different length. 'one' vs 'two' would be OK if there is no strong connotation that the 'old' side is always truly older in the function in question). I would not mind the result of such an update that much. We already do use different pair of words in places that we could have used <old, new> after all. Having to review too many updates like that in a single sitting would be annoying, though. The same thing for where we use 'this'; if the existing code is contrasting 'this' with 'that', and if your C++ effort wants to replace 'this', you MUST replace 'that' as well so that we would still be contrasting a pair of variables appropriately named.
