Re: pg_attribute_noreturn(), MSVC, C11

Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>

From: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>
Date: 2024-12-14T17:15:13Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On 13.12.24 20:10, Andres Freund wrote:
> C11 has been out a while, so I'm somewhat inclined to adopt _Noreturn/noreturn
> in a conditional way. Older compilers would still work, just not understand
> noreturn.
> 
> One wrinkle: _Noreturn/noreturn have been deprecated in C23, because that
> adopted C++11's attribute syntax (i.e. [[noreturn]]). But that's at least in
> the same place as _Noreturn/return.
> 
> We can't remove [[noreturn]] with preprocessor magic, so it's not really
> viable to use that for, uhm, quite a while.
> 
> If we were to use _Noreturn, I think it could just be something like:
> 
> I think it should suffice to do something like
> 
> #if defined(__STDC_VERSION__) && __STDC_VERSION__ >= 201112L
> #define pg_noreturn _Noreturn
> #else
> #define pg_noreturn
> #endif

This looks reasonable to me.  We also have pg_nodiscard.  (That's got a 
slightly different history in the C standard, but I mean it's also 
"pg_someattribute".)

> (or alternatively include stdreturn if __STDC_VERSION__ indicates support and
> define a bare 'noreturn' if not)
> 
> For msvc that mean we'd need to add /std:c11 (or /std:c17) to the compiler
> flags, as it otherwise it results in a weird mix of c89 an c99). But that
> might be a good idea anyway. With one minor change [1] the tests pass with
> msvc when using /std:c17.

According to my notes, C11 requires MSVC 2019, and we currently require 
2015, so this will require a bit of logic.



Commits

  1. Use standard C23 and C++ attributes if available

  2. Swap order of extern/static and pg_nodiscard

  3. pg_noreturn to replace pg_attribute_noreturn()