Re: What's the policy for bug priorities, again

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

Steven Bosscher wrote:

> Mark just made an ICE in the compiler with non-default options a P1
> bug for GCC 4.5 (xf.
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2010-02/msg01695.html).
> 
> Can someone please explain why this kind of bug should be of
> release-blocking priority?

As I wrote in the PR, I want to understand what kind of "broken" applies
to this pass.  To be clear, I have no idea whether the pass is perfect,
totally wrong, or just a bit buggy.  I'm not casting any aspersions
whatsoever.  I'm responding to your comment in the PR that the patch is
broken.

Shipping a compiler with an option that we know is just a piece of junk
is a bad idea.  It's one to ship an experimental option, or a
"technology preview"; it's another to ship something that's no good to
anybody.  As a responsible software distributor, we should disable such
things in our releases.  GCC *developers* can always hack the source if
they want to play with the feature, but GCC *users* shouldn't look at
the manual, turn on some option that we know doesn't work, and then have
the compiler blow up.

I consider it P1 to understand what the situation is here.  That doesn't
mean we should fix the ICE.  The right outcome might be to disable the
pass, or to do nothing at all.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713