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Re: GCC 3.3, GCC 3.4
- From: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>, Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz at redhat dot com>
- Cc: "tromey at redhat dot com" <tromey at redhat dot com>, "dje at watson dot ibm dot com" <dje at watson dot ibm dot com>, "jbuck at synopsys dot com" <jbuck at synopsys dot com>, "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 13:25:09 -0800
- Subject: Re: GCC 3.3, GCC 3.4
--On Monday, February 03, 2003 10:16:51 PM +0100 Gabriel Dos Reis
<gdr@integrable-solutions.net> wrote:
In parallel, we may have an experimental
branch in stage 1 for more than 4 months...
Unfortunately, this is how we get weird releases of GCC not based on
any FSF release.
It is something of a disaster for the GCC project when releases get made
out of the middle of nowhere; we get the bug reports, we get crticized,
we have to deal with compatibility issues we didn't know about, and some
of our best contributors end up stabilizing a release we don't really know
exists, with the result that a lot of that work has to be done again in
the mainline later.
If we were able to get all the stakeholders (GNU/Linux distributors,
end users, embedded systems vendors) together to agree on when they
wanted releases, things would be simpler: it would make sense to
tailor the releases to their needs. But, in practice, all these
groups are in conflict.
Arguing over whether particular branches are important, and whether we
should wait for them, and so forth is incredibly unpleasant. That is
what will result if we start trying to plan by weird sets of major
features.
And, at some point we still have to stop and stabilize, and people
will still want to add more features and will still complain that
they can't both fix bugs and implement new stuff.
==
I fully recognize that the current process leaves plenty to be desired.
However, this is not a simple problem. It is one I have spent a lot
of time thinking about and a lot of time talking to people about.
It is over-constrained, and no matter what we do there will be
some unhappy people.
Frankly, I think the process we have now is about as good as any other
process. Not better, but approximately as good. After all, we've done
a number of releases since 3.0, and most have been pretty well received.
Most people agree that, on balance, 3.2.1 was a good release.
I'd rather see us fixing bugs and making progress towards 3.3 and 3.4
than opening up a whole new can of worms.
--
Mark Mitchell mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC http://www.codesourcery.com