Re: Patch to generate gcc.1 from invoke.texi

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com> writes:

    Richard> toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl said:
    >> I hope that such a patch might be acceptable even after the
    >> GCC-3.0 branch is made (otherwise I'd have to do it today :-()

    Richard> I really hope we don't branch today.  Given that I've
    Richard> been trying to chase bugs all week that have prevented
    Richard> the ARM compiler from bootstrapping, I really don't think
    Richard> things are anything like stable enough yet.

I was aiming at tomorrow night.

The questions in my mind are:

  - Given that very few people have made much effort in the last
    week to stabilize the tree, can we realistically
    expect stabilization on the mainline?

  - If we cannot expect that, we are better off stabilizing on a
    branch, rather than waiting to stabilize before branching.

I don't really think that's a bad thing.  We have the *functionality*
we need at this point.  What we need to do a release is bug-fixing.
It seems reasonable to me to do that on a branch.  The work on the
branch will help the mainline because bug-fixes on the branch will be
applied to the mainline too.

In general, I am somewhat disappointed in the level of effort people
have put in terms of working directly towards 3.0.  I don't think that
is anybody's fault.  I have been a less-than-perfect leader, and
people have always been helpful when I have specifically asked for
assistance.  

The primary problem is that people are busy doing other things, which
isn't their fault.  I think that this stems to some extent from the
fact that, while many organizations are paying for GCC support and
development, very few are paying explicitly for work in the FSF
development tree.  That means that other trees are regularly
stabilized towards a release, but that happens less often in FSF tree,
because the same resources are not available there.

This is a fact of life, so we simply have to the best we can in the
face of that.  I hope that we'll be able to get enough volunteer
effort to stabilize the 3.0 branch effectively, in a relatively short
period of time.

--
Mark Mitchell                   mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC               http://www.codesourcery.com