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Re: GCC Release Status (2003-08-22)
- From: Wolfgang Bangerth <bangerth at ices dot utexas dot edu>
- To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>
- Cc: Gerald Pfeifer <gerald at pfeifer dot com>, Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 16:19:43 -0500
- Subject: Re: GCC Release Status (2003-08-22)
>| (Given that GCC 3.4 will be a "we break nearly all of your (non-ISO) C++
>| programs" release, we may want to push it out the door relatively quickly
>
> I'm skeptical about that approach. I believe that if GCC-3.4 is
> rock-solid enough and does good jobs, then people will embrass it.
> However, if it is released too quickly and we did not have enough time
> to fix outstanding issues, then people will just ignore it and we
> would miss audiance there.
That is what happened with gcc 3.0. That was not a bad compiler, but people
still didn't accept it because it broke their code. It took them quite a
while until they realized that it is really _their_ code that's broken, not
gcc, and that waiting for the next release is not going to improve their
situation. I wouldn't be surprised if we had the same this time -- a good
compiler without people using it.
On the other hand, my feeling is that presently
- the C++ part certainly has quite a number of things to fix; we get a pretty
continuous influx of bug reports with regressions on mainline. I wouldn't
want to go out the door in the present shape, but things have become much
better since the new parser went in.
- there are presently about 50 C++ PRs targeted for 3.4. That is not
incredibly many, and I'm pretty certain that most of them will be fixed in
time.
- overall, I think the C++ part is not in such a bad shape. I started working
on gnats about a year ago, and we had 570 open C++ reports back then.
We're presently at 330. Subtract the 50 that will have to be fixed for 3.4,
and we have a rather impressive improvement in this area. I think the C++
maintainers should really be commended for this!
- I use mainline since May for my daily development. It's not that it would be
totally broken.
In other words, if the C++ maintainers say they will have the time to fix the
existing regressions, then I don't see why we should give _much_ more time to
let things settle.
W.
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Wolfgang Bangerth email: bangerth@ices.utexas.edu
www: http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~bangerth/