Re: GCC 4.1 Projects

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false dot org>]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 02:57:05PM -0800, Mark Mitchell wrote:
> Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> >The libada-gnattools-branch suffers severely from having to be maintained
> >in parallel with mainline (since it's a rearrangment of existing code).
> >Another two months of waiting will necessitate many hours of totally
> >unneccessary work on my part.
> 
> The same is true for everyone who has to wait to check in a patch. 
> Conversely, checking something in can cause work for lots of other 
> people if things go wrong.
> 
> >Although you have listed it as "stage 2", I wish to commit the finished
> >portion as soon as possible during stage 1.  I have maintainership 
> >authority
> >to do so.  This will not interfere in any way with *any* of the projects
> >approved for stage 1, since it is in a disjoint section of code.  
> 
> If it breaks bootstrap, it will definitely interfere.  If it causes 
> patch conflicts with other changes it will also interfere.  And if it 
> doesn't cause any patch conflicts, then it probably won't be very hard 
> to maintain on a branch.

Nathanael said it did not interfere with any of the other _projects_,
not that it would be disjoint from all Stage 1 _patches_.

And just because it would not be "very hard" to maintain on a branch
doesn't mean he should have to do it.  You maintain branches all the
time, Mark; you know it's not a piece of cake.

> > Accordingly, I plan to do so unless I am told not to.
> 
> I would certainly prefer that you hold off until Stage 2, as indicated 
> by the documented I posted.

I think that you need to be a little more specific when asking a
maintainer to hold off on committing a patch that he has authority to
commit, desire to commit, and has been maintaining separately - out of
deference to the 4.0 schedule - for many months.  He would have been
well within his rights to not submit a project proposal at all, and
just check it in.  I'm sure many larger patches will go in during Stage
1 without any coordination.

Could you explain what benefits from waiting?  None of the other large,
scheduled changes from 4.1 benefit from pushing this back. The only
thing that it saves is one possible cause of broken bootstraps; you may
as well ask no one to check in large patches, then.  I'm sure plenty of
people less careful than Nathanael will break bootstrap in the next few
months.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC