Re: Adding zlib to GCC

[Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>]

Mark Mitchell wrote:

>   - After a while, suppose the Fortran compiler team decides to
>     release a new version.  They do this:
> 
>       - Is a new version of the back-end ready?
> 
>       - If so, does it make things better?  Does it make things
>         worse?  If it makes things worse, try to get the back-end
>         guys to fix the problems.

Perhaps you should talk to Craig Burley (i.e. doing some paleocodology).
We've been in this position between the 17th of February 1995 and the
11th of August 1997 and I'm sure glad that that's in the *past*.

Apart from the fact that nobody ever seemed to listen to Craig when he
needed a tiny tweak in the backend, we had constant "issues" about
heuristics in the backend that just did the Wrong Thing when presented
with Ye Average Fortran Do Loop Nest [if you're interested I can forward
the mail I sent RMS about this just days before the EGCS project got off
the ground].

Perhaps I just don't see the problem.

. If I develop something in the Fortran Frontend, I build with
  --disable-checking --enable-languages=c,f77
. If I'd would ever get the time to work on the backend, and I'd
  have a Fortran code example to work with, I would also build with
  --disable-checking --enable-languages=c,f77
. Then, after development is complete, I would make one full build
  plus make -k check and submit the patch + test results to gcc-patches.
. Subsequently, I would apply the patch.

Certainly, in the next-to-last stage, I would perform a full bootstrap
with all frontends - so what ?  By that time you're already convinced
your stuff works and you've moved on.  Stage 3 and 4 are only meant to
get the stuff into the tree, not to develop it.

-- 
Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html
GNU Fortran 95: http://g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction)