Re: source mgt. requirements solicitation

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Robert Dewar wrote:
>
> > I think parsing is underrated
>
> Just for interest, do you include static semantic analysis in your
> definition of parsing (it is very unusual to do so, but I have noticed
> a tendency to this unusual usage in the gcc world).

No, I'm literally talking about how nice it was to see all the C
preprocessor improvements - which is at an even lower level than parsing
the actual C sources - "just" tokenization and macro expansion.

The fact is, the "big" things get a lot of mental attention, because they
are sexy from a development standpoint, so people tend to think about hard
problems like register allocation when they think about "compiler
development". But I don't really think the big things are even as
important as getting all the little things right.

That's what I mean by the "99% perspiration" paraphrase.

Let's face it, gcc output hasn't improved _that_ much over the years.
There are apparently still cases where gcc-2.7.2 generates better code
than the 3.x series, and does so much much faster. Some kernel
developers still use old compilers just because they don't have all
that beefy machines, for chrissake!

Don't get me wrong - gcc has made _major_ strides in things like C++ and
Ada support, but maybe one source management approach would be to actually
split off the languages somewhat, and make development easier by having
fewer dependencies (not worrying about breaking C++ when doing Java,
making bootstraps faster etc).

			Linus