RE: Roadmap for 4.9.1, 4.10.0 and onwards?

[Paulo Matos <pmatos at broadcom dot com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org [mailto:gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org] On Behalf
> Of Basile Starynkevitch
> Sent: 20 May 2014 16:29
> To: Bruce Adams
> Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Roadmap for 4.9.1, 4.10.0 and onwards?
> 
> On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 11:09 +0100, Bruce Adams wrote:
> > Hi,
> >     I've been tracking the latest releases of gcc since 4.7 or so
> (variously interested in C++1y support, cilk and openmp).
> > One thing I've found hard to locate is information about planned
> inclusions for future releases.
> > As much relies on unpredictable community contributions I don't
> expect there to be a concrete or reliable plan.
> 
> > However, equally I'm sure the steering committee have some ideas
> over
> > what ought to be upcoming releases.
> 
> As a whole, the steering committee does not have any idea, because GCC
> development is based upon volunteer contributions.
>

I understand the argument but I am not sure it's the way to go. Even if the project is based on volunteer contributions it would be interesting to have a tentative roadmap. This, I would think, would also help possible beginner volunteers know where to start if they wanted to contribute to the project. So the roadmap could be a list of features (big or small) of bug fixes that we would like fixed for a particular version. Even if we don't want to name it roadmap it would still be interesting to have a list of things that are being worked on or on the process of being merged into mainline and therefore will make it to the next major version.

That being said I know it's hard to set sometime apart to write this kind of thing given most of us prefer to be hacking on GCC. From a newcomer point of view, however, not having things like a roadmap makes it look like the project is heading nowhere.