BLD: move -std=c99 addition to CFLAGS to Azure config - #12620

The two TravisCI build matrix entry that have dist: xenial (= Ubuntu 16.04) passed, everything else failed on compiling pocketfft. Xenial on TravisCI has gcc 5.4.0. The other builds are on Ubuntu 14.04, and use gcc 4.8.4.

gcc 5.1 was only released in 2015; I think gcc 4.8 and 4.9 are still fairly extensively used. So only putting -std=c99 in our CI config may lead to more contributors and users running into this. On the other hand, we don't mess with inserting flags for other compilers either, I think we in general expect users/contributors/packagers to handle this by themselves. So not yet sure what the best thing to do is here.

Seems to me like trying to automagically set compiler flags properly for people in the vast array of scenarios out there is asking for trouble compared to just documenting that we use C99 standard moving forward & directing issue reports to some brief documentation about this.

So, I think I like the idea of just setting the C99 flags where needed in CI & documenting the requirement briefly (which is probably already done somewhere) as opposed to a programmatic interjection on compiler flags for pip, setup.py & so on.

Note that -std=c99 is required for in loop variable declaration. It is needed for pocketfft, at least for the gcc version used to build wheels.

Note that -std=c99 is required for in loop variable declaration. It is needed for pocketfft, at least for the gcc version used to build wheels.

Yes I know. It's exactly because it's required that I think that we should not add it to runtests.py. Otherwise we get into the situation where we fix it for ourselves, and leave everyone else who installs from source to deal with the problems.

Instead, I think what we should do is one of:

• document the correct solutions, and let everyone who uses a too old compiler deal with it themselves
• hack it into numpy.distutils or a setup.py file to fix it for everyone

Since there's not much precedent and it's not entirely clear how big a fraction of users/devs will be impacted, I'm not sure which of the two options is best. I think putting it in numpy/setup.py is probably cleanest. Will need to make that from what's basically a do-nothing file into one that messes with compiler detection and CFLAGS then. The alternative is special-casing building numpy in numpy/distutils/ccompiler.py.

hack it into numpy.distutils or a setup.py file to fix it for everyone

Okay I tried, there's no good way to do either as far as I can tell: rgommers@8aaf4d8. I think just moving it from runtests.py to the Azure config as in the first commit in this PR is the way to go. gcc < 5.0 will become less common over time

Is there any distutils parallel to autoconf's AC_PROG_CC_STDC or cmake's set_property(TARGET tgt PROPERTY C_STANDARD 99)?

@eric-wieser pretty sure there's not. That's why I tried to implement the check in the commit linked in the comment above.

Thanks Ralf.