This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: "Experimental" features in releases
- From: Janis Johnson <janis187 at us dot ibm dot com>
- To: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:10:18 -0700
- Subject: Re: "Experimental" features in releases
- References: <4443E3EA.7000508@codesourcery.com>
On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 11:52:26AM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote:
> My suggestion is that features that are clearly experimental (like this
> one) should be (a) documented as such, and (b) should generate a
> warning, like:
>
> warning: -ftree-loop-linear is an experimental feature and is not
> recommended for production use
Or, while new optimizations are considered experimental they can use
different options to make it clear: -fexperimental-tree-loop-linear.
What does "experimental" imply? Comments in invoke.texi about the few
existing options said to be experimental imply that they might not
actually speed up code in all cases, but that's true of many
optimizations that are not included in -O2. From this discussion it
almost sounds as if an experimental optimization is more likely to
result in an ICE or wrong code, and such bugs have a lower priority
than other bugs.
Janis