This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: gcc 3.5 integration branch proposal
On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 04:28:50PM -0800, Joe Buck wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 07:05:54PM -0500, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > "Same high quality"? I know you're aware of them, but you might want
> > to revisit the reasons that _no vendor_ I know of in several years has
> > shipped an FSF released compiler.
>
> For this message I'm taking off the SC hat and putting on the corporate user
> hat.
>
> My employer uses FSF-released compilers in preference to those
> vendor-hacked compilers to develop its commericial products. That's
> because we can't have one GCC compiler for GNU/Linux and another one with
> a different set of bugs for Solaris, and because we usually need a newer
> compiler and an older OS version.
That's a good reason I hadn't considered.
> > Even Debian, which is chronically
> > short of the talented manpower required for compiler development, ships
> > fifteen hundred lines of GCC patches plus a bleeding edge 3.3-cvs
> > snapshot last I checked.
>
> That's inaccurate in several respects. First, Debian has not shipped
> yet; you are describing what is in their testing branch. Second, most of
> the 1500 lines do not touch the gcc source itself, but create the
> Debian-specific files for their packaging system. AFAIK, Debian is
> assuming that their 3.3-cvs compiler will correspond to 3.3.3 by the
> time sarge is shipped. By doing what they are doing, the Debian people
> are finding bugs in 3.3.x that no one else is finding (thanks to their
> ports to platforms that would otherwise get little use).
No, that's incorrect on a few counts:
- The last Debian release did the same thing. Of course, that was
the 2.95 branch.
- If history is any judge, Debian will end up staying with some
particular branch snapshot based on when every other piece of the
Debian release comes together. There's only minor preference towards
release tarballs and at this date I don't think another bump is likely
before sarge.
- I was only counting the patches to the source. There's another
fifteen _thousand_ lines of assorted documentation and packaging.
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer