Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!mmdf
From: THELBEKK%NORUNIT.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Minix/ST <stdio.h> problems.
Message-ID: <5183@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 3 Nov 88 21:01:56 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 18

With regard to portability problems:  It was mentioned that some pointer
versus int assumptions had "been allowed to creep into" GNU CC.  This is
nothing new to me...  I've had occasion to work with several programs
by Stallman & Co, and while admitting freely that RMS is something of a
genius, and FSF just what the doctor ordered, it seems that the assumtion
that (sizeof(int) == sizeof(int *) == 32) is pretty much accepted.  In
fact, parameters to functions and return values of functions are often
explicitly declared as int.  I ported GNU Bison to Microsoft C under DOS,
and it was a pretty tough job.  Must have rewritten pointer arithmetic
in some 30 or 40 places from what it was to what it should have been, in
addition to all the other little fixes necessary.  It was worth it, the
program now compiles with no warnings at max warning level, and works
perfectly -- it has already generated compilers successfully under DOS.

Anyway, beware of GNU software on 16-bit machines; it will usually need
quite a bit of work to get it running...

-tih