Re:With Undefined Behavior, Anything Is Possible
by jancsika on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:15PM
(#17791114)
The obvious and uncontroversial answer is that there is no sane way this gcc extension can be dropped. Dropping the extension would mean there is no performant way to get at the bits of IEEE 754 floating point data in C (and perhaps other data types, but that's the one in my use case).
How much do you trust the GCC implementors to a) maintain the behaviour that's relevant to your program b) maintain GCC at all? How much do you trust that the rest of the ecosystem will continue to support GCC and/or this GCC dialect?
Think of "the gcc dialect of c" the same way you'd think of any semi-obscure programming language, and ask the same questions you would: what kind of debuggers/profilers exist for it? How easy is it to hire people with experience in it? How much momentum is there behind it?