"brian m. carlson" <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On 2021-11-15 at 07:00:25, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> "brian m. carlson" <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> >> > Even for users who would like to target an older version of Windows, >> > such as the no longer supported Windows 7, GCC and Clang are available. >> > The LLVM suite, including Clang, is available pre-compiled for download >> > free of charge. Using a different compiler is specifically proposed by >> > Microsoft staff[1] as a solution for users who wish to build modern >> > programs for MSVC versions which do not support modern C. >> > >> > As such, we can assume that Git can be safely compiled with C99 or C11 >> > support on all operating systems which receive security support, and >> > even some which do not. Our CI confirms that this series passes all >> > tests. Let's introduce a test balloon which checks for this support and >> > fails with an error message if it is absent. >> >> I do not have much against adopting nicer C99 language features in >> principle, but I hope that we are not becoming too Linux centric >> with "other than Linux, as long as Windows is OK in some form, >> everything is peachy" mentality. > > It's definitely not my goal to exclude Windows here. I'm pretty sure > every major Unix platform will handle this fine, and an up to date > MSVC will also handle this fine. > > Because compiling Git for Windows is a lot of work (not due to any > failing of that project or its members, just the fact that it requires a > lot of components to be assembled, including a full POSIX environment), > it's not very likely we're going to see a lot of people doing it, since > almost all Windows users are going to be using the regular releases. > It's also likely that they're going to be using some automated CI system > which will likely support a recent version of the compiler. > > However, we have in the past heard screaming from people who want to > support old versions of Windows, so my point here is that there are > options if they can't use MSVC for any reason and those options are > easy, accessible, and free of charge. I should point out that we > already require people on non-Linux Unix systems to install GNU make and > possibly also a shell (if theirs doesn't support the local keyword), so > installing suitable tooling to build Git isn't without precedent. Windows does not need me to worry about them---they can fend for themselves. I cannot tell if the original discussion behind the patch considered the current situation in non-mac BSD land (which I am not familiar with), or even less common platforms like NonStop.
