C is not node.js. C exists for 50 years and is expected to have stable API. In scientific circles it's not unusual to compile c and f77 libraries built in the 70's, 80's.
BLAS, gemv, GEMM, SGEMM libraries are from 1979, 1984, 1989. You may have seen these words scroll by when compiling modern 2025 CUDA :)
I was writing C long before node.js existed :)
C has no backwards compatibility guarantee, and it never has. Try compiling K&R C with gcc's defaults, and see what happens.
You can build your legacy code with legacy compiler flags. Why do you care about the ability to build under the modern standards?