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Re: Beyond GCC 3.0: Summing Up
- To: aoliva at redhat dot com, dewar at gnat dot com
- Subject: Re: Beyond GCC 3.0: Summing Up
- From: dewar at gnat dot com
- Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:37:06 -0400 (EDT)
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu,mark at codesourcery dot com
<<Even when the patch also causes things to work that did not work
before? Is it more important to keep the set of known failures
unchanged than to make progress by fixing a bug, even if exposing
another latent bug? I don't think so.
>>
Well I do think so! It is great to "expose" latent bugs *if* they
get fixed quickly. If not, then there is no choice but to back out
a change that causes regressions.
<<How about a patch that fixes a problem in some port, and comes with a
testcase that happens to exercise the same bug in another port? Does
the patch have to be reverted just because the bug-fixer didn't even
know about that other target?
>>
Absolutely if the break in the other target is a signifciant one!
It is far too myopic to say, as Richard seems to be saying, "my fix
is locally right, I refuse to remove it, and if it breaks something
else, then it's a latent bug and it is not my job to fix it."
Of course if patch fixes somethings and breaks others, then a judgment
has to be made, but the burden is strongly on the side of avoiding
regressions.