Using these extensions are not really necessary, and I've a strong suspicious it was more of an attempt by the GNU authors to prevent distributions to ever consider not using GCC as their main compiler.Īlso how name resolution is implemented in Glibc means you can't really statically link with it.
For instance, last time I checked they not only used the completely insane folly that GCC nested functions are, but they also relied on GCC attributes so nasty that LLVM never bothered implemented them (like renaming functions at code generation). An attempt is cyclically started and then promptly aborted when some new crazy nonsense is found. Glibc is also such a mess that it still does not compile with Clang, after _decades_, due to all the crazy GCC extensions they rely on. Few people here remember about EGLIBC I guess. The fact the project was run for almost 20 years by a guy that managed it in a dictatorial style was a huge reason why so many alternative libc existed (that, and the licensing). I've fought for years against the fact they've got functions that are not found in any other libc and have different behaviours depending on macros, often conflicting with POSIX or BSD variants. Glibc is a nasty piece of software full of nonstandard GNUisms that basically implements a separate standard.
