Re: PATCH: Turn on -fomit-frame-pointer by default for 32bit Linux/x86

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

On 08/03/2010 06:57 PM, Mark Mitchell wrote:
> Andrew Haley wrote:
> 
>>> On balance, I think it's appropriate to make the change.  I think
>>> there's an overall move towards ABIs without frame pointers, and
>>> that if x86 stakeholders want to change, it's not our place as GCC
>>> maintainers to do this.
> 
>> A problem with "x86 stakeholders" is that we've historically been
>> rather poor at finding our users and consulting them before making
>> changes.  This has resulted in a number of flamewars, particularly
>> over type-based alias analysis.
> 
> That's a general problem with free software: there are zillions of
> users, and we don't know where they are or what they want.  I don't
> think there's a really great way to solve this problem, though there's
> no doubt an interesting Ph.D. thesis in there somewhere.
> 
> One thing we could do pretty easily is to ask some distributions whether
> they will accept the change in defaults -- or undo it locally.  If, for
> example, Red Hat product management is going to tweak the compiler so
> that it's default is -fno-omit-frame-pointer, in order to maintain
> backwards compatibility, then that's a valuable data point, since it
> means that Red Hat believes its customers would be unhappy with the
> change.  On the other hand, if Debian says that they'll happily go along
> with the change, then that's a point in favor of making the change.
> 
> So, maybe we need a poll of some of the most popular x86 Linux
> distributions, such as Debian, Red Hat, SuSe, and Ubuntu?

I propose to raise this matter on the LKML.  Does anyone think this
would be a bad idea?

Andrew.