Re: debugfs: dump a sparse file as a new sparse file

[Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Jan 01, 2013 at 04:25:04PM -0500, George Spelvin wrote:
> 
> That's a good enough reason; my only remaining objection is calling it
> "a non-standard/non-portable GCC extension".

Fair enough.  Basically, e2fsprogs is targetting C89, and with the
exception of inline functions (which is optional; e2fsprogs will build
on compilers which don't handle inline functions, and it's only
recently that I switched us over to use C99 inline functions instead
of the old gcc's gnu89 inline declarations), as far as I know we're
not dependent on any C99 language features.

Because I tend to use a very conservative coding standard for
porability's sake, I sometimes lose track of what's actually allowed
by C99, and what's a GCC extension.

BTW, I'll note that in C11 (ISO/IEC 9899:2011), VLA's have been made
**optional**.  Hence, even for programs targetting C11-compliant
compilers, it's still not a good idea to use VLA's in your code if you
are striving for maximal portability.

Regards,

	      		      	    	 - Ted