Re: GCC-3.3.4 release status report

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Wolfgang Bangerth <bangerth@ices.utexas.edu> writes:

| >On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 11:09:52AM +0100, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| >>   The number of open PRs targetted for 3.3.4 has grown up to 46
| >> (from 41 last report).
| >
| > That is a *huge* number of bugs to attempt to fix in the fourth point
| > release; an attempt to fix even half that number will probably result in
| > 3.3.4 being less stable than 3.3.3. 
| 
| Indeed. My feeling is that way too many patches are going into 3.3.4 without 
| any analysis as to the risk of them.

I believe that is too much a strong statement.  No patch is blindly
applied to GCC-3.3.4

If your point is that any single patch has a potential risk for
unconvering other bugs, yes that is true and I'm well aware of that.
By the very nature of GCC, it is not always easy to tell *all* the
implications that any arbitrary patch will have, as side-effects.
The easiest and not very useful, IMO, position would be to close
the branch.  After all, that is what had been decided. 
But, I think there are room for improvements;  I accept patches based
on their contents, descriptions of the problems they address and
impacts, and inputs from various maintainers.

I could come tomorrow with a release note saying that only two PRs are
targetted for 3.3.4; I doubt that would make GCC-3.3.4 better than it
looks now.  I could also come and say I have 100 open PRs for 
GCC-3.3.4; I doubt it would make GCC-3.3.4 worse than it is now.

-- Gaby