Re: GCC developers and standards development

[Michael Meissner <meissner at cygnus dot com>]

On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 09:06:59PM +0100, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> Are any GCC developers (including developers for language front ends not
> yet distributed with GCC) actively involved with the relevant language
> standards committees?
> 
> It has from time to time been noted that there was a lack of GCC input
> (beyond public comments from some people) into C9X development, and that
> committee members weren't familiar with GCC extensions.  It was also for a
> long time the case that GNU seemed to prefer its own version of "embrace
> and extend" to standards and portability.  While the latter has improved,
> has the former (lack of involvement in standards development)?

I was on the ANSI X3J11 comittee (C) from its inception through the release of
the 1989 ANSI and 1990 ISO standards, representing first Data General and then
OSF, and was a GCC developer the last year I was at DG and the 5 years I was at
OSF.  After 10 1/2 years on the committee, I was burned out on the committee,
and did not push too hard to have Cygnus (and now Red Hat) send me to the
meetings.  In at least the initial work on C9X, I did bring up GCC extensions,
etc. notably inline.

Note, ISO/ANSI meetings can be very expensive to support.  When I was on the
committee, at times they had 4 week long meetings per year, which usually meant
you spent an additional week per meeting doing other preparation, such as
reading and writing proposals.  The meetings rotate between US and internation
locations.

-- 
Michael Meissner, Red Hat, Inc.  (GCC group)
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, Massachusetts 01886, USA
Work:	  meissner@redhat.com		phone: +1 978-486-9304
Non-work: meissner@spectacle-pond.org	fax:   +1 978-692-4482