Re: gcc 3.5 integration branch proposal

[David Edelsohn <dje at watson dot ibm dot com>]

>>>>> Geoff Keating writes:

> Apple would like to use FSF releases.  Unfortunately, a prerequisite 
> for this is that the FSF actually makes releases in a timely fashion, 
> and this is not happening.

	I want to make sure that we distinguish between timely and
frequent.  I have received private feedback that vendors would appreciate
release dates that coincided better with a development plan schedule, but
they do not necessarily want more frequent releases than what we currently
are producing -- including the current slippage.  It's the inability of
vendors to plan any schedules around FSF GCC releases that is one of the
problems, IMHO.

	Most GCC developers work for vendors who have their own schedules
and own development priorities.  If FSF GCC's development process better
took those priorities into account, we might be able to get more help from
those vendors to produce timely releases.

	I previously have suggested defining feature goals for GCC
releases in conjunction with developers and vendors.  If vendors need a
feature in their own release, having that feature accepted and integrated
into FSF GCC would motivate them to use FSF GCC and work to have FSF GCC
released with that feature.

	We currently are spending so much time in feature-freeze mode and
leaving patches proposing new features unreviewed, that vendors have no
choice but to focus on their own source base.

	FSF GCC also has a very large and diverse user community who
provide conflicting feedback about their priorities:

* Correct code generation
* Fewer ICEs
* Standards conformance
* Compilation speed
* Performance
* Features
* Release frequency
* Release timeliness

	We need to figure out how to balance those goals better without
losing ground in areas where we recently have been improving.

David