Re: PING: gimplifier ICE fix / broken GCC 4.0

[Chris Jefferson <caj at cs dot york dot ac dot uk>]

Helge Hess wrote:

> A comparison with gcj is a bit ridiculous since cc1obj was working 
> just fine since something like 1990? And now, in 2005 a whole language 
> is dropped and several projects are left in the rain just because the 
> GCC core developers are unwilling to spend some thoughts and a few 
> hours per year on fixing an issue raised by changes in C/C++?

I don't claim to be an expert on gcc development. However even I know 
that between 3.x and 4.x there have been some huge changes in the 
internal architecture of gcc, which has thrown up a number of bugs in 
all the frontends, which had to be fixed. These bugs are caused by 
general improvements to the internals of gcc, but of course as more 
people run and test c and c++, they got caught faster in these languages.

While of course it would be good if the objective-c++ front end would 
continue working through this that would be good, you can't expect 
people to find and fix bugs in everything. You also seem to be under the 
impression that if someone happens to change and improve the optimiser 
(for example), then for them understanding the entire objective-c++ 
front end and all it's data structures takes "a few hours a year". I'm 
fairly sure this is going to be very, very wrong.

Also, as must of gcc is a volunteer project, then I would really, really 
advise you start very quickly being much nicer and less confrontational. 
Most people here aren't paid, and those who are usually are paid to help 
with some specific area which probably isn't obj-c++.

Chris