You could have read the same stuff from my link too. No need to bring up the Standard (btw. it is the old one). There is exactly one point where bitfiels are used and this is for TilepointData and as I wrote it works with both compilers.
Where is the problem now? He doesn't use it and since there is still no unit test for the environment it has to be tested anyway. You wrote "as it relies heavily on implementation dependent struct mechanics". What do you mean by that? What does rely heavily? The whole library?
Btw. why do you even use MSVC if there are better Open Source compilers? Microsoft products are commonly known for not working as expected.
Just look at this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18212873/c11-on-windows
It probably would not work with some C++11 stuff either and I certainly do not care.
I will try to get a Windows build done using mingw or Clang but certainly not using a Microsoft compiler.
Sorry but I get upset because the last time I wrote about wc3lib in this forum which is really some time ago you wrote exactly the same stuff.
wc3lib is far from being finished but you're bringing up some minor stuff here. What is the purpose? To me it seems that you want to spread around how much you know about the Standard and alignment.
Of course it could be ported to all platforms/architectures with some macros since everywhere the same read and write functions are used but what would be the purpose of this when in the first place basic functionality must be provided?
You're welcome to add some of this functionality and maybe one day we get a library with all the required customizable tools.