Re: Allow C99/C11 in bfd?

Joel Brobecker
2020-01-24T13:20:12Z

> > (I'm not even going to ask about C++, although I think that would be nice)
>
> Bah! Real programmers don't use C++! Just joking of course,
> but I seriously doubt that we will want to change the code base
> now. Speaking personally I am much more comfortable with C
> than with C++, but that is probably just me.

The way the Pro C++ members of the GDB community approached the
suggestion was by building a case of what C++ would bring,
concretely, in terms of improvement. They also had a transition
plan. As someone who was _not_ in favor of the switch to C++, I had
to admit that the C++ proponents had some solid points and that
those against did not have a solid counter-argument. It took
a while, as a decision of this magnitude always takes, but
it helped us keep the discussions focused on factual technical
arguments. I thought that worked really way for the GDB group.

Assuming the community is not refusing to even hear about the idea,
how things happened in GDB could be inspiration for how to at least
debate the merits of the change.

Note that the idea might be dead right off the bat if being
usable from C is an objective of the binutils project. For
a relatively low-level library like this one, I wouldn't personally
be surprised.

--
Joel