With Microsoft producing MSVC/C2 compiler with Clang frontend, I am surprised they did not abandon the MSVC at all - they have a hard times even at supporting C99, not to mention modern C++ technologies. And all those tools and plugins built around Clang/LLVM. MSVC is a legacy of XX century and should be abandoned for good.
All the updates regarding C99 and C11 in Visual C++ are related to ANSI/ISO C++ requirements regarding C compatibility, as Herb states.
Regarding legacy, Visual C++ is one of the top C++ compilers doing incremental compilation and linking, which still beats Rust compilation times on Windows.
C99 and C11 library support is required by ANSI/ISO C++.
As for the minor language changes, there was a blog post that I cannot locate now, stating it was to the extent required for porting well known projects to Windows, the remaining features would depend on key customers feedback.
> They don't have any hard time supporting C99, from Microsoft point of view C is done, time to move on to C++.
If that's the case then Microsoft should get its corporate ass out of C's standardization committee. It makes no sense to waste their time forcing requirements onto a standard that they refuse to comply with.
I’m sure you won’t like this comment, but doesn’t Microsoft have a vested interest in keeping C as unchanged as possible? If C were to run away in unorthodox directions, that would hurt compatibility with C++ and hence Visual Studio. So from their perspective it may make perfect sense to stay on the committee to keep it as conservative as possible. Why voluntarily give up soft power?
There's a link in the article here, but sadly it sounds like they've abandoned Clang/C2. I guess they got normal MSVC up to speed on the C++1y/z they wanted to support, and Clang/LLVM was always better than both at complex numbers, inline assembly, and other C features.
