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Re: type consistency of gimple
- From: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Michael Matz <matz at suse dot de>
- Cc: Daniel Berlin <dberlin at dberlin dot org>, Kenneth Zadeck <zadeck at naturalbridge dot com>, Richard Guenther <richard dot guenther at gmail dot com>, GCC <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>, "Novillo, Diego" <dnovillo at redhat dot com>, "Hubicha, Jan" <jh at suse dot cz>, "Edelsohn, David" <dje at watson dot ibm dot com>, Andrew Pinski <pinskia at physics dot uc dot edu>
- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:17:58 -0700
- Subject: Re: type consistency of gimple
- References: <44DCEAAA.9000306@naturalbridge.com> <84fc9c000608111344l3cc4b9f0w97f104da6ed5b7ad@mail.gmail.com> <44DCEDF1.9010902@naturalbridge.com> <84fc9c000608111356n6bd522d5gd349007fdcb0cd1b@mail.gmail.com> <44DCF0A0.1060005@naturalbridge.com> <44DF6702.4060901@codesourcery.com> <44E074F4.3050402@dberlin.org> <44E094AA.3050804@codesourcery.com> <Pine.LNX.4.64.0608141843290.25141@wotan.suse.de>
Michael Matz wrote:
>> pressure build on some set of infrastructure until it has been painfully
>> obvious for some amount of time that it has to change. (In my
>> experience, the same thing happens in developing proprietary software;
>> convincing product management to let you spend significant time fixing
>> something that's not on the next release's feature list requires some
>> good salesmanship.)
>
> How true :) Nevertheless the goals for the FSF GCC should IMHO be purely
> based on rather technical arguments and considerations, not the drive by
> paying customers.
Even when I was contributing purely as a volunteer, I had motivations of
my own, like wanting to use a particular feature in a program I was
writing. I don't think we can realistically expect that the SC can set
up a master plan for everyone to follow.
The SC or the maintainers are in my opinion completely justified in
blocking the inclusion of a technically inferior patch, even if it has
some short-term benefit. There's no reason that any contributor should
get to jam in a patch that's going to make things hard for everyone else
in future. So, I'm not arguing that "whoever gets there first wins", by
any means. But, I don't think we can ignore the motivations of
contributors, either; we've got to accept that they'll invest
time/effort/money in GCC only to the extent they see return on that
investment.
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713