Re: [PATCH 2/2] C99 support: remove non-HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS code

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org,
	"brian m . carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] C99 support: remove non-HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS code
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 04:00:58 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YHVPurTYDUE9XHN7@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqeeffe669.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 10:58:22AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Remove code that depend on HAVE_VARIADIC_MACROS not being set. Since
> > 765dc168882 (git-compat-util: always enable variadic macros,
> > 2021-01-28) we've unconditionally defined it to be true, and that
> > change went out with v2.31.0. This should have given packagers enough
> > time to discover whether variadic macros were an issue.
> 
> It hasn't even been a month since we did v2.31.0.  Since it was not
> even a maintenance release for security update, I have no reason to
> expect packagers to be all that prompt to react.  And because we
> gave them an escape hatch, they may have used it to update their
> distro packages and haven't had a chance to tell us about it yet.
> 
> So, the above does not sound like a credible excuse to make our
> future work necessary to react to "our toolchain is not ready yet"
> complaints bigger.  At least not yet.

Yeah, the whole idea of the change in v2.31.0 was to change as little as
possible for the weather-balloon. I agree that waiting longer to see the
results of our test makes sense, unless there is a pressing need.

If we had some new use case that was going to have to _add_ workarounds
for platforms without variadic macros, I'd be more inclined to think
about that timetable versus how much work it would be to add those
workarounds. But since there isn't one, it seems there is little cost to
waiting longer.

-Peff