Re: Should we work around msvc failing to compile tab-complete.c?

Hi,

On 2024-07-08 14:18:03 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> > Compiling postgres on windows with tab-completion support fails either with
> > "fatal error C1026: parser stack overflow, program too complex”.
> > or (in recent versions) with
> > "…/src/bin/psql/tab-complete.c(4023): fatal error C1001: Internal compiler error."
>
> > It's pretty easy to work around the error [2]. I wonder if we should just do
> > that, then we don't have to insist on a very new msvc version being used and
> > it'll work even if they just decide to fix the internal compiler error.
>
> I'm on board with doing something here, but wouldn't we want to
> back-patch at least a minimal fix to all supported branches?

I think we'd need to backpatch more for older branches. At least

commit 3f28bd7337d
Author: Thomas Munro <tmunro@postgresql.org>
Date:   2022-12-22 17:14:23 +1300

    Add work-around for VA_ARGS_NARGS() on MSVC.


Given that - afaict - tab completion never used to work with msvc, I think
it'd be ok to just do it in 17 or 16+17 or such. Obviously nobody is currently
building with readline support for windows - not sure if any packager is going
to go back and add support for it in older branches.