On Oct 2, 2014, at 7:36 AM, William Gropp <[email protected]> wrote:

There are two points here:

[... C89 / compiler warning screed here ...]

I'm not going to waste our time debating this with you, as we both know we are highly unlikely to change the other's views on this issue. I think that achieving zero warnings on common compilers in strict compilation mode is important and more valuable than certain other things, and you don't. It's largely a value judgement either direction, which doesn't make either of us right in any absolute sense.

2) Language version choices and coding standards. The real point here is that coding standards are important and should be followed by anyone working on the code. Changes to the coding standard need to be made collectively and explicitly; individuals must not decide that they know better. On this specific question, it may very well be time to move to C99, but that must be a deliberate, collective choice. And the issue is not whether such compilers exist, but whether our user community uses and trusts them. At this point, the answer to that question is probably yes as well, but that’s the correct question to ask (and yes, a deliberate and explicit decision could be made to require a C99 compiler and exclude any users that insist on sticking with C89).

Junchao made the right call.

I was not asking Junchao to go off and make a bunch of cowboy changes, but for him to push for modernization in a collective decision instead of accepting the C89 coding standards as dogma. I just said it in a terse, semi-inflammatory style that could be misunderstood. Perhaps it's time to take my iconoclastic views and go back to full-on lurking on this list. -Dave