CodingGuidelines: mention C99 features we can't use

The C99 section of the CodingGuidelines is a good overview of what we
can use, but is sorely lacking in what we can't use. Something that
comes up occasionally is the portability of %z.

Per [1] we couldn't use it for the longest time due to MSVC not
supporting it, but nowadays by requiring C99 we rely on the MSVC
version that does, but we can't use it yet because a C library that
MinGW uses doesn't support it.

1. https://lore.kernel.org/git/a67e0fd8-4a14-16c9-9b57-3430440ef93c@gmail.com/

Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
index f9affc4050a66bad9b0d27a5078c47a284ef0350..9598b45f7e0bafe7e1b19b6325c1fb4ae36ba979 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
+++ b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines
@@ -235,6 +235,13 @@ For C programs:
    . since late 2021 with 44ba10d6, we have had variables declared in
      the for loop "for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)".
 
+   New C99 features that we cannot use yet:
+
+   . %z and %zu as a printf() argument for a size_t (the %z being for
+     the POSIX-specific ssize_t). Instead you should use
+     printf("%"PRIuMAX, (uintmax_t)v).  These days the MSVC version we
+     rely on supports %z, but the C library used by MinGW does not.
+
  - Variables have to be declared at the beginning of the block, before
    the first statement (i.e. -Wdeclaration-after-statement).