Re: Mistaken change in GCC (fwd)

[JF Martinez <jfm2 at club-internet dot fr>]

Linus Torvalds writes:

> In article <10011222207.AA17151@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> you write:
> >    So it would be OK if we include bloatcpp.c in gcc 3.0 and go to a more
> >    minimal tradcpp implementation in the gcc release after the next emacs
> >    release?
> >
> >I'm can't speak for the emacs folks, but it would certainly address my
> >objection.
>
> Now, this is probably going to be considered too revolutionary, but why
> not
>
>  (a) admit that it's GNU emacs that is ugly, and that some of the onus
>      of maintaining that uglyness should fall on GNU emacs instead of
>      the compiler.
>
>  (b) face the fact that with an integrated cpp, you might as well drop
>      the notion of an external cpp _entirely_ from the gcc distribution.
>
> Problem solved.
>
> Make a separate package called "cpp", which is utterly, totally, and
> completely independent of the package called "gcc".  The two really do
> not have anything to do with each other any more once gcc uses cpplib.
> And splitting the projects up would be a goodness.
>
> Yes, gcc itself will use the external cpp when passed the "-traditional"
> flag.  So what? Gcc already uses external programs like the assembler
> and the linker to do its work for it. cpp isn't anything special. It
> should probably havce been external all the time, in fact.
>
> AND make that package available to emacs users. If they are upgrading
> their compilers, they might as well just upgrade their cpp packages too.
>
> Is there any reason _not_ to do this? It should solve the problem, AND
> it means that gcc won't have to carry the baggage around.
>
> Emacs could even include the package in the next release, so that people
> woudln't need to know about the issue.  It's not as if it will be
> noticeable on an emacs scale anyway.  The Emacs philosophy has always
> been to package everything in one place ("it's an editor.  It's a
> newsreader.  It's a LISP environment and a web browser.  And NOW, the
> all-improved Emacs can also do C preprocessing!"), so it should make
> everybody happy.
>
>                         Linus

In fact my persoinal dream has ever been to have Gnu Emacs running on the
bare metal with external programs doing system calls to  a kernel included in
it.  :-)

                                    Jean Francois Martinez