But why would the kernel depend on gcc? Are there so many gcc-isms in there that... | Hacker News

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roel_v on May 24, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: C++ at Google: Here Be Dragons

But why would the kernel depend on gcc? Are there so many gcc-isms in there that would be hard to replicate on other compilers?

adestefan on May 24, 2011 | [–]

The biggest one is (was?) the use of GNU variable length arrays. The GNU extension has different syntax than C99's variable length arrays. There are also instances of __attributes__ on platform specific code.

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