Re: Adding zlib to GCC

[Geoff Keating <geoffk at cygnus dot com>]

> From: Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com>
> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 08:21:54 -0700

> >>>>> "Geoff" == Geoff Keating <geoffk@cygnus.com> writes:

>     Geoff> I detect confusion here.
> 
> No, I'm really not, I do understand what's being built when.  I just
> don't care. :-)
> 
> You do tell me I am confused a lot though, even when I am not. :-) 

Well, my confusion-detector sometimes gets swamped by local confusion :-).

...
> This method breaks many of the dependencies between back-end and
> front-end.  Even a wild set of changes in the back-end causing massive
> instability do not impact the front-end guys.  The Fortran guys don't
> impact the C++ guys.  The up-front design effort resulted in a *much*
> cleaner interface between the front-end and back-end than in GCC.

I agree.  It's been a long-standing problem in GCC that there is no
clean separation between the front-end and back-end.  We don't even
have the interface documented outside the code!

>     Geoff>      Likewise, if your program uses small GNU software
> 
> Are these things GNU packages?

I believe that zlib will be part of the final GNU system, yes.  It
is not part of the GNU project.  I don't know in which sense this
sentence was meant.

> I think the release tarball issues are pretty much orthogonal, though.

Yes.

> You seem very convinced that you are right about what source should go
> in CVS. 

I am?  I didn't think so.  I think one of the sentences you didn't
quote was:

> > Put them in CVS, maybe, maybe not.

> I do believe I am right about the larger software engineering issues.
> Our current process does not scale well.

Well, there's only one way to find out for sure :-).

In practise, I find that it's always amazing how much you can stretch
such things.  Are front-end people really finding it difficult to work
because of back-end bugs?

-- 
- Geoffrey Keating <geoffk@cygnus.com>