Re: PATCH: Put libunwind.a in libgcc_s.so: versioning of _Unwind_*() symbols

[Arnaud Charlet <charlet at ACT-Europe dot FR>]

OK, let's all be constructive as you were in your last message.

First of all, I deeply apologize if you felt I was insulting you: I
was not and never intended to.

Now for some of the details:

> > gthr-gnat.c is no longer needed at all, except on VMS.
> 
> I know.  You said that in an earlier message, and I agreed with you.  So
> why are restating the obvious?  That could be misconstrued as an insult.

It certainly is not. I have no way of knowing whether you indeed saw my
earlier message, whether this message was phrased in a way that could be
understood as intended by others, etc...

You know that you understood my message, I didn't, so I had to assume the
default, which is that it doesn't hurt to repeat an information twice
(this is what all teachers do btw, and students do not find that their
teachers insult them when teachers repeat things twice).

> > No, you missed the fact that gthr-gnat.c is using pointers to functions,
> 
> You are mistaken.  I did not miss this fact.  The only way I could have
> missed this fact is if I was incompetent, and I am not incompetent.

I certainly did not want to imply that you are incompetent.

It's a communication problem: your message as I read it seemed to imply that
you had not seen the whole usage of this feature, which even if true
would not mean you are incompetent. It would simply mean that you missed
it because e.g. you were looking at a part of the code that you are
not familiar with (the Ada front-end), and that the code is mixed/used
between Ada and C in various places.

And also, I was more responding for others than you, since your message
itself was a response, and since I understood it differently than you
phrased it, other people may have done exactly the same thing. So I
believe my clarification and additional information on your statement was
helpful to others. I'm sure you can understand that and would agree with
that.

> I can interpret the above statement is as an insult.  I am offended by
> it, and hope that you do not make this mistake again.

With all your respect, I believe that if you interpret the above statement
as an insult, it could be because indeed you know too well that you are
competent, and cannot accept remarks/suggestions/help from others as
openly as someone less competent (or simply someone not as focused on the fact
that he is competent). You also seemed to miss the fact that not everyone knows
you personally and not everyone knows your level of knowledge and knows
that you read all messages on this list and always interpret them as initially
intended.

On my side, I agree that I should not have assumed anything, and phrase my
answer differently. This would probably have avoided this whole discussion.
I'll try to remember that in the future and be more careful in my answers.

Now, starting to know better your personality, there are some chances (and
hopefully I will be proven wrong) that you take the above paragraphs as an
insult: it's not, I'm trying to be helpful and help you realize that there
are many ways to communicate and state things, and that on a public list with
people coming from different background, it's impossible to know everyone and
to respond to everyone with exactly the phrasing that will make them understand
what you meant to say. And even if it were possible, other people may still
misinterpret some statements.

This thread is a very good example: you did not use the right phrasing to
allow me to understand what you were saying (although your phrasing was
certainly obvious to you), and I did not use the right phrasing to answer
to you either.

> > Because no file is referencing these symbols.

> Do you know this for a fact?  Or are you making an logical assumption? 
> If you are making a logical assumption, then I would agree with you. 
> However, statements from HJ contradict this.  It is possible that there

It's more than a logical assumption. If the code were indeed referenced,
we would get undefined references when linking.

> is some obscure subtle interaction that is IA-64 specific and which has
> gone unnoticed so far.  Since I am trying to keep an open mind, I must
> admit that this is a possibility however remote.  It is also possible

Right, it could be.

So I'd suggest the following experiment: remove all traces of gthr-gnat.c
in the GCC sources in a local copy and see whether you get some undefined
references and some changes in behavior.

If removing all traces still allows you to link, then it indeed proves that
this file is not needed.

BTW, the above suggestion was 'obvious' to me after my previous messages,
and I assumed that others (e.g. you) would do/understand it without having to
explicitely state it. Clearly, that was either a mistake on my part
(assuming other people would have the same way of reasoning than myself),
or indeed you understood that from my previous messages as I assumed it,
and since you didn't state it explicitely, I decided to make it explicit.

Following your reasoning, if indeed you already understood and maybe made
the above experiment, you might also find 'insulting' that I made this
suggestion explicit, since it was 'obvious' to you what I had in mind,
because you are <choose your word here: competent, etc...>.

All right, back to technical matters, and waiting to see the result of
the above experiment if anyone finds it's a helpful suggestion and has
the time to do it.

Arno