Re: [Lsb-wg] opposition to LSB 2.0 rc1

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

anderson@freestandards.org writes:

| > 2) LSB C++ specification enshrines non-current, inferior technology.
| >
| >    The draft LSB spec implies C++ support implemented by a future
| >    release of the gcc 3.3 compiler. As of today, the last gcc
| >    release in this series (gcc-3.3.4) cannot meet the LSB
| >    specification, although future releases (gcc-3.3.5) may.
| 
| Current CVS on the 3.3 branch matches the specification. Distributions
| have a long history of grabbing patches from CVS and backporting them
| to previous releases.

Yes, but those "grabbings" are no "coordinated" and each vendor has
its own set of additions.  I believe the main issue is that there is
no point in specifying a standard if the mainstream distributions,
e.g. FSF official releases, cannot or don't meet it.
I'm of the opinion that the LSB specification should be worked closely
with GCC maintainers. 

| The patch needed in this case is trival, and should
| cause no difficulty to backport.

Yet, I don't believe that is the way we should proceed with something
we want to be standard for the GNU project.

| I believe this same situation has existed previously with glibc, and
| backporting a small number of changes was viewed as acceptabvle then.

The situation is not the same: We don't have an ISO PAS for glibc.

| >    However, the current FSF release of gcc is gcc-3.4.1, which is
| >    incompatible with the older release series. This release provides
| >    substantial benefits to users, including increased compiler and
| >    runtime performance, increased conformance to C99 and C++
| >    standards, and innovative new features.
| 
| We look forward to aligning the C++ definition in the LSB to gcc 3.4
| in the next major release (LSB 3.0), curently scheduled for Summer 2005.

I hope it would be worked out together with GCC maintainers.

-- Gaby