Making GCC easier to learn

These notes have been taken by BasileStarynkevitch from a BOFS session of the GCC 2008 summit (Ottawa, june 17th 2008). Feel free to improve them, or add comments.

what kind of hacks are we talking about ?

documentation:

correct
not good enough
mostly inside the source

needed map of the source code?

hard to learn: many accidental details

building the cross compiler is messy.

new passes are easier to understand than older ones.

Getting the copyright assignment to FSF is hard work.

modularity

greater in kernel than in GCC

excitement level?

old GCC summits

older machine descriptions

wiki: Getting started page.

GCC development model is decentralized

patches shold be : code + doc + tutorial

harder to publish / update doc.

wide open wiki

documentation: too much text, not enough pictures? organize the information?

what is the "career path" in GCC?

how to make GCC sexier?

have new code in C++ and overtime all of gcc will be in c++

gentoo community: hard users of GCC.

Not enough maintainers? Maybe the SC should improve the procedure?

document bug-fixing procedures.

gcc-patches@ list is where all thing happen. Bug database under nused. In contrast in Mozilla, the major communication channel is the bug database.