Banned C++ Features in Chromium

Re:Banned C++ Features in Chromium by pkasting on Saturday January 24, 2026 @10:49AM (#46744565)

This bit us in Chromium. We at least discussed forcing the compiler to use unsigned char on all platforms; I don't recall if that actually happened.

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Re:Banned C++ Features in Chromium by MaskRay on Saturday January 24, 2026 @12:45PM (#46745710)

I recall that google3 switched to -funsigned-char for x86-64 a long time ago.

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Re:Banned C++ Features in Chromium by pkasting on Saturday January 24, 2026 @02:18PM (#46746626)

A cursory Chromium code search does not find anything outside third_party/ forcing either signed or unsigned char.

I suspect if I dug into the archives, I'd find a discussion on cxx@ with some comments about how doing this would result in some esoteric risk. If I was still on the Chrome team I'd go looking and see if it made sense to reraise the issue now; I know we had at least one stable branch security bug this caused.

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