Re: C++ binary compatibility between GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.2?

[Iain McClatchie <iain at truecircuits dot com>]

Isn't this issue pretty obvious?

- All the major distributions want to go with something similar
  to the 3.1.1 code base, since it's well tested.

- All the major distributions want to avoid ABI changes

- ABI changes involve bumping the major rev number

- Big changes that don't touch the ABI also bump the major rev.

- The major distributions represent a very important segment of
  the GCC user community.

So you add the ABI change to 3.1.1 and call that 3.2.  This
is what all the major distributions want to ship, so they are
well incented to test the hell out of it.

What you had been calling 3.2 gets called 3.3.  Yes, it's too
bad that 3.2 won't be as great as you'd been hoping, but...
let it go.  The important thing is that as many users as
possible get as much of the great work you folks have been
doing as soon as possible.

So 3.2 won't be so great, but you won't be working on it very
long either.  FSF adopts the responsibility to maintain the 3.2
codeline, producing 3.2.1, 3.2.2, etc, as the distros feed back
fixes for the inevitable problems.  But you'll end up shifting
your focus to 3.3 very quickly.

Names aren't very important.  What is important is whether the
FSF crowd are going to take on significant extra management labors
in order to deliver a stable ABI for a while.  Yes, making a 3.2
which exists mostly to incorporate distro bugfixes is not very
grand, but it serves many users very well, and those same users
will have a much easier time upgrading to 3.3 later.

And that means that more people will get more of your good work
sooner.

-Iain McClatchie                       iain-3@truecircuits.com
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True Circuits, Inc.                    650-691-7606 FAX
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