Re: Mistaken change in GCC (fwd)

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

In article <10011222207.AA17151@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> you write:
>    So it would be OK if we include bloatcpp.c in gcc 3.0 and go to a more
>    minimal tradcpp implementation in the gcc release after the next emacs
>    release?
>
>I'm can't speak for the emacs folks, but it would certainly address my
>objection.

Now, this is probably going to be considered too revolutionary, but why
not

 (a) admit that it's GNU emacs that is ugly, and that some of the onus
     of maintaining that uglyness should fall on GNU emacs instead of
     the compiler. 

 (b) face the fact that with an integrated cpp, you might as well drop
     the notion of an external cpp _entirely_ from the gcc distribution.

Problem solved.

Make a separate package called "cpp", which is utterly, totally, and
completely independent of the package called "gcc".  The two really do
not have anything to do with each other any more once gcc uses cpplib. 
And splitting the projects up would be a goodness. 

Yes, gcc itself will use the external cpp when passed the "-traditional"
flag.  So what? Gcc already uses external programs like the assembler
and the linker to do its work for it. cpp isn't anything special. It
should probably havce been external all the time, in fact.

AND make that package available to emacs users. If they are upgrading
their compilers, they might as well just upgrade their cpp packages too.

Is there any reason _not_ to do this? It should solve the problem, AND
it means that gcc won't have to carry the baggage around.

Emacs could even include the package in the next release, so that people
woudln't need to know about the issue.  It's not as if it will be
noticeable on an emacs scale anyway.  The Emacs philosophy has always
been to package everything in one place ("it's an editor.  It's a
newsreader.  It's a LISP environment and a web browser.  And NOW, the
all-improved Emacs can also do C preprocessing!"), so it should make
everybody happy.

			Linus