Re: GCC 4.1.0 Released

[Steven Bosscher <stevenb dot gcc at gmail dot com>]

On Wednesday 01 March 2006 21:49, H. J. Lu wrote:
> It is the issue of quality of gcc 4.1 on IA32/x86-64. The current gcc
> 4.1 performs very poorly on IA32/x86-64, comparing against gcc 4.2.

Oh, really?  Where are the numbers you have to support this, may I
say, unlikely claim?

It seemed to me that the patch you propose does not help that much at
all.  At least, if it does then that was not clear from the initial
postings for the trunk, where except for Nocona it was a wash.

> I can't recommond gcc 4.1 to most people using IA32/x86-64.

You'd have to recommend ICC anyway :-P 
GCC 4.1 works a lot better for me on my AMD64 box than any previous
GCC (except for the usual compile time regressions).  so I _would_
recommend it to, well, everyone!

> This change 
> is specific to the IA32/x86-64 backend and won't affect any other
> targets.

Hmm...  I thought Mark's message was pretty clear:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2006-03/msg00060.html
To quote:
"The GCC 4.1 branch is now open, under the usual branch rules: fixes for
regressions only."

Those are just the same rules that gcc has had for release branches
since forever.  I think everyone understands that you, with an Intel
cap on, have to care more about Nocona than about GCC stability in
general. But that doesn't mean that the rules that apply to everyone
else should not apply to you.

Your patch implements a new feature. New features usually don't fix
regression. So your patch should be considered for GCC 4.1 IMHO.

Gr.
Steven