[Ffmpeg-devel] Matroska Patch

[Rich Felker]

On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 10:58:42PM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 04:53:44PM -0500, Rich Felker wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 08:21:33PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> > > > For some reasons MSVC doesn't like a variable called time. It must
> > > > be defined as a macro somewhere. And changing a name can't be such a
> > > > bad change.
> > > 
> > > Then figure out why.  We don't support msvc, and will not accept
> > > arbitrary patches to make it work without an explanation.
> > 
> > ANSI/ISO C does not allow you to use "time" as a symbol name with
> > external linkage, but it's totally valid to use it as a local variable
> > or with static linkage. If MSVC chokes on this, tough. MSVC users can
> > add -Dtime=MSVC_sucks_time to their compiler options...
> 
> Or we could just rename the variable and make everyone's life a bit
> easier.  IMO this is one of the cases where we should budge.

I disagree strongly. Renaming variables because of a broken compiler
simply hides bugs in the compiler. If people keep seeing that they
have to make workarounds when using broken compilers maybe they'll
complain to the compiler vendor or switch to a standards-compliant
compiler. If we just hide the bug it encourages people to use this
crap.

This is the same as MPlayer's policy for not including bug-workarounds
for random gcc releases that crash with ICE and stuff.

Rich