Re: Criteria for GCC 4.0

[Phil Edwards <phil at jaj dot com>]

On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 01:38:02PM +0200, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> 
> By your reasoning, GCC 3.4.0 should have been GCC 4.0, because of the
> new C++ front end (which is undoubtedly a far more visible change than
> the new fortran front end) which does break compatibility.

Yes, I agree.


> > -Wall needs to mean all warnings. If we want to have a switch that
> > means "most of the warnings," or "all of the warnings (that we like),
> > " that's fine, and I think it's a good idea. But we shouldn't lie to
> > the user. 
> 
> Again, I don't see this as a user-visible change that justifies a new
> major number.  There is nothing about this change that would breaks
> backward compatibility in Very Bad Ways.  It would only make things
> work as expected, so in fact you just listed a simple bug fix here.

You're slightly misunderstanding the list.  It was not

    Any one of these things means a bump to 4.0.

It was

    When we release 4.0, these things should be in it, because we
    would be abdicating responsibility if we don't.


I'm not arguing for /never/ having a 4.0 release (although others do take
that position, and it's a reasonable one).  I'm arguing that mainline,
today, right now, does not qualify.


> > The results of the Acovea project need to be studied carefully and
> > taken into account. Perhaps -O2 should turn on a reasonably good set
> > of optimizations for the platform at hand, rather than a static set.
> 
> And again, this change is no more user-visible than tree-ssa, so by

I disagree; turning optimizations on and off can and does make a change.


> > Our documentation needs to help, not hinder. (The tone and grammar is
> > wildly inconsistent. The sections are in no clear order. Very little
> > is up to date.)
> 
> And how does this break backaward compatibility?  I'm not going repeat
> myself again...

In quoting the web page, you've clipped the bits that say "these aren't
breaking changes, they don't need to be in 4.0, but if we're making a 4.0,
we should make them".

Also, the paragraph that specifically pointed out that the next things on
the list were developer-visible changes.  :-)


-- 
Behind everything some further thing is found, forever; thus the tree behind
the bird, stone beneath soil, the sun behind Urth.  Behind our efforts, let
there be found our efforts.
              - Ascian saying, as related by Loyal to the Group of Seventeen