Re: Public History of the GCC project

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com>]

[ discussion of gcc mailing list archives ]

> Yes, But they don't contain the entire history. 
> It starts in 1997 on the web,
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/1997-09/
> ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/mail-archives/1997/

The messages from 1997 to early 1999 are actually for egcs, not
for the official FSF gcc.  Before egcs, the gcc development list was
private information and was not made available to the public.

> On Geocrawler there is references back to 03/31/1987 23:53:31,
> that is ten years of mails:
> http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/358/1987/
> But I dont know where these are stored on the gcc site.

The pointer you give is to a list that evolved into the equivalent of
the current gcc-announce.  The development list was not public for most
of the period.  (it looks like there was lots of development discussion
for 87 and 88, but notice that for 1990 there were only two messages
in the whole year).

> But it would be great to show each function and file from the gcc and
> what mail references it. That would greatly help the understanding of
> the source code. That can best be done by having both the Source, the
> CVS and the mailing list locally.

In the early days of the GCC project, no source control system was used
at all.  CVS was not used before the egcs project started, though RCS
was.