Re: Beyond GCC 3.0

["Joseph S. Myers" <jsm28 at cam dot ac dot uk>]

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Richard Kenner wrote:

> A minor issue is that I think the "48 hours" period for fixing bad changes
> should be modified to at least take into account weekends and holidays and
> perhaps to have a range (say 36-72 hours) depending on the importance of the
> change in question, the severity of the breakage, and the stage of development.

GCC is developed by people everywhere, so there is no date or time that is
holiday for everyone or does not cause problems for someone if GCC is
broken then.

> A major concern relates to the issue of major development in the mainline
> during four of each six months.  The proposal you've made means that if a
> window is just missed, it will be four months until a development branch can
> be merged in.  This is a long time and causes two problems, first that it
> will be frustrating to the developers on that branch to wait that long to
> have their work be seen more widely and second that the work involved in
> doing the merge will be high.

Yes; it also seems to me that this scheme does not leave time for
conscientious developers to do their major mainline developments without
feeling any particular conflict with spending time on branch stabilisation
- which in this proposal is taking place for 4 out of 6 months, with the
other 2 months not being a time for major mainline work.

> Another concern of mine here is how many such development branches we are
> going to get, how long they'll be active, and concerns about conflicts
> between the branches.

What authority would be required to start a branch?  Indeed, what is now
required to start a branch for development affecting files beyond one's
area of maintenance?  Is it approval from someone with global write
privileges?

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk