2021.01.01 19:31 "[Tiff] Enabling and requiring C99 language support", by Roger Leigh

2021.01.04 04:01 "Re: [Tiff] Autotools", by Jeff Breidenbach

As mentioned, I had a significant data corruption event about 10 years ago. It was due to an incorrect value for SIZEOF_LONG in tiffconfig.h (which is generated by configure). I presume this exact problem will become impossible if libtiff switches to C99, because presumably libtiff won't be using long any more.

Looking a little more carefully at that tiffconfig.h, there's just a bit more platform compatibility stuff in there (HOST_BIGENDIAN, HAVE_IEEEFP, HOST_FILLORDER). I don't know if C99 can make all those go away or not. But if it does, that would be nice. One less opportunity for mistakes to happen.

My favorite part of C is the language almost never changes. My favorite part of libraries like libtiff is their API almost never changing. But I can understand this change; data corruption mistakes are no joke.