Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] sideband.c: Use xmalloc() instead of variable-sized arrays.

From: Johannes Sixt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:34:55 +0100

Nicolas Pitre schrieb:
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> How come we got along with this not very portable construct for so long?
>> Probably because the array sizes were computed from the results of
>> strlen() of string constants.
> 
> Maybe because it isn't not so unportable anymore?  I doubt that 
> compilers that don't know about automatic arrays would be smart enough 
> to notice the variable was actually a constant due to the strlen() of a 
> constant string and just do like if there wasn't any variable for the 
> array size.

I just tried it with Visual Age 6, and got this:

    CC sideband.o
"sideband.c", line 22.18: 1506-195 (S) Integral constant expression with a
value greater than zero is required.
"sideband.c", line 62.51: 1506-195 (S) Integral constant expression with a
value greater than zero is required.
make: *** [sideband.o] Error 1

But before I got to this point I had to change all 'static inline' in
git-compat-util.h to plain 'static'. So this compiler is out of the game
anyway.

Having said that, I'd actually prefer to stay with variable-sized arrays
if they prove portable enough because we don't need the handful of free()s
on function exits. Junio, if you like I can resend patch 2/2 using
variable-sized arrays.

-- Hannes