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Re: Patch queue and reviewing (Was Re: Generator programs can only be built with optimization enabled?)
On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 10:16:38PM +0200, Eric Botcazou wrote:
> > But GCC is a mature compiler, it's stable, and while it has bugs and could
> > be better, I'm not sure I *want* GCC to start changing much more rapidly
> > than it changes today. Bugs will be fixed, yes. New features will be
> > introduced, yes. But will the quality level be maintained?
>
> You can't put new features and bug fixes in the same basket. They can even be
> viewed as steering the compiler in opposite directions quality-wise. If you
> don't want to increase the patches-per-day ratio, the only solution is to
> prioritize bug fixes over new features. For example we could introduce
> secondary maintainers with approval rights for bug fixes only or something
> along these lines.
That might make sense.
I'm not saying I don't want to increase the patches-per-day ratio,
particularly with respect to getting bug fixes in. However, bug fixes
carry their own risk: I had a project where we found that one out of five
fixes to critical bugs introduced another critical bug, though the number
was so high because the project required critical bugs reported by
customers to be fixed under severe time pressure so GCC would not see so
high a ratio. Sometimes you need time to check whether a bug fix is
really correct, or if it just patches over a symptom.