processor architects say it's hard to work with us?

[Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot com>]

Steven, if you use a subject line like "GCC" on the gcc list, people
might not bother to read your message.  So here it is again.

I suspect that one issue is that the restriction that a patch be
architecture-specific might be seen as too severe, if the existing GCC
infrastructure lacks capabilities that are needed to get good results
on novel architectures.  I know that this was part of the reason for the
pgcc fork: Intel engineers got better code for the Pentium by slashing
away at the frontend/backend distinction than they could have achieved
by doing things "right".

On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 08:44:19AM +0200, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> In the "Processor Architect's Panel" at the kernel summit, GCC was
> apparently discussed shortly:
> 
> "Jon 'maddog' Hall said that the various processor architectures wild
> also benefit from paying more attention to gcc. The architects responded
> uniformly with complaints about how difficult it is to work with the gcc
> team. They all understand their interest in having gcc work will with
> their processors, but actually getting patches into the gcc code base is
> difficult."  (http://lwn.net/Articles/40831/)
> 
> I'm not sure why they think it is so difficult.  It would seem that if
> the patch is architecture-specific and well-formed (ie. conforming to
> the coding style, etc), it typically just goes in, period.  And patches
> to target-independent code may go through one or two review cycles, but
> again, if the patch looks good, it goes in.  At least, I got the
> impression that patches are seldomly rejected.
> 
> So why would these people think it's difficult to work with the people
> on this list, and to contribute code (and what can be done about it)?