A year ago, libav developers introduced a tool to translate a subset of C99 syntax in order to build libav with Visual Studio* . At the time Microsoft famously recommended that developers wanting modern C language features simply use C++ instead* . For a long time, up until earlier this year* , it was thought that C in MSVC had been permanently relegated to legacy support. Even for those of us who don't develop for Microsoft platforms, the attitude towards adoption of newer C standards has ostensibly had a negative impact. Which is why, even in lieu of full conformance, it's refreshing and a good sign to see this tool become unnecessary with the public release VS2013 today.
* http://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2012/09/27/microsoft-visual-s...
* http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/05/vs_c99_support
* http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh409293.asp...