Re: Use of C99 int types

[Al Viro <viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk>]

On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 12:48:04AM +0200, Dag Arne Osvik wrote:
> unsigned long happens to coincide with uint_fast32_t for x86 and x86-64, 
> but there's no guarantee that it will on other architectures.  And, at 
> least in theory, long may even provide less than 32 bits.

To port on such platform we'd have to do a lot of rewriting - so much that
the impact of this issue will be lost in noise.

Look, it's very simple:
	* too many people blindly assume that all world is 32bit l-e.
	* too many of those who try to do portable code have very little
idea of what that means - see the drivers that try and mix e.g. size_t with
int, etc.
	* stdint is not widely understood, to put it mildly.
	* ...fast... types have very unfortunate names - these are guaranteed
to create a lot of confusion.
	* pretty much everything in the kernel assumes that
4 = sizeof(int) <=
sizeof(long) = sizeof(pointer) = sizeof(size_t) = sizeof(ptrdiff_t) <=
sizeof(long long) = 8
and any platform that doesn't satisfy the above will require very serious
work on porting anyway.