Re: [musl] __MUSL__ macro

[Markus Wichmann <nullplan@gmx.net>]

Am Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 11:02:21AM -0400 schrieb Andrew Bell:
> I guess I don't understand the opposition -- is there any downside to musl
> to having the macros defined, necessary or not? (I'm saying this as a
> minimalist, so I'm surprising myself here.)
>

Yes, it makes people write worse code. Not making the macros available
makes people write more portable code, which is a good thing. Sometimes
people have to be made to think for a moment, and broken out of their
rut, to get them to do the right thing.

There is also the issue of what exactly the macros mean. Between
distribution patches and backports, a version number does not
necessarily map to a feature or bug set. And musl does not want to have
any quirks, it wants to just be a POSIX implementation. So what
specialties are supposed to be kept in mind when the musl macro is
defined? Keep in mind that __GNUC__ also does not just mean gcc anymore.
These things keep going off the rails all the time.

Ciao,
Markus