Re: [patch] Get coreutils 6.1 to build on a ANSI 89 compiler

[Paul Eggert]

mwoehlke <address@hidden> writes:

> people seem to want to only support GNU software
> on the latest stable release of Linux

That may be true for other packages but it's not true of coreutils.
Coreutils is built fairly regularly on older systems, even systems
like Solaris 2.6 (released 1997) that are no longer supported by their
original suppliers.

> Now, to answer the original question, I *think* most of those have a
> C99 compiler available

You don't need C99 to build unpatched coreutils.  All you need is a C
compiler that supports declarations-after-statements.  GCC 2.95
doesn't qualify, but GCC 3.0 and later do.

Also, if you apply the patch that's distributed wth coreutils, you
shouldn't even need a declarations-after-statements compiler.