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Re: Criteria for GCC 4.0
On Tuesday 01 June 2004 21:46, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> > Nevertheless, GCC gets far less attention than the Linux kernel gets, so
> > I'm not surprised that people were surprised.
>
> That's because Linux has kerneltrap.org and a thousand other sites that
> pay attention to it. There isn't an equivalent of kerneltrap or Linux
> Newbies or distrowatch for GCC.
That's in part because compilers are not as "sexy" as kernels, /methinks.
> > It's not possible to change the economic model. In free software,
> > whatever contributors are willing to contribute and the maintainers are
> > willing to accept becomes the priority.
>
> To people outside the GCC developer community, it is very unclear as to
> what those priorities are and how they are set. As it stands now, GCC
> appears to be driven by those who pay for its development: vendors who
> sell software compiled with GCC.
It is equally unclear who sets the priorities for the kernel, or
really for any other "unorganized" FOSS project. So IMO this is
a bogus argument.
FWIW, many vendors, like SUSE, allow their people to work on what
they think is necessary. Take for example the call graph code, which
wasn't a vendor idea, but just an inspired moment by Honza. I think
that in many cases the vendors don't drive the development of GCC at all.
> That is a fairly narrow base; it does
> not account for the needs of 90% of those who compile code with GCC.
Who would be in that other 90% if I may ask? I believe you're blowing
this thing out of perspective.
Gr.
Steven