Re: Enough already! (Re: PROPOSAL: Objective-C++ )

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Nicola Pero wrote:

>But I must say that I would be extremely disappointed by the SC if Apple
>offered to donate one of its diamonds - the Objective-C++ compiler - to
>the GNU project - and the GCC SC would refuse to accept it ... it would be
>nearly ridicolous.
>
Speaking as a member of the SC but not on behalf of it:  Gcc cannot
blindly accept contributions, even if they unquestionably useful.  Gcc
is already very big and difficult to maintain, so any new contributions
must be "clean" and fit into the general design and plans for Gcc.

So if comes down to a technical evaluation:  How clean are the patches,
do they needlessly complicate the compiler, are they consistent with
general design goals and plans for future changes, do they add a
maintainance burden on the existing maintainers, versus how useful
and desireable is the features implemented by the patches?  This to
me is primarily a decsion for the maintainers of the C++ front-end.
They will have to decide if the Objective-C++ compiler is a
diamond or a piece of coal.  While in principle it would be nice to
merge in Objective-C++, not if it uglifies the existing C and C++
front-ends, since the latter is much more important than the former.
(I don't care so much whether the uglifies the ObjC front-end, since
the ObjC and XxxStep people will both pay that cost and gain the benefit.)
    --Per