This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
Re: Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?
Phil Edwards wrote:
I'm assuming that gcc 4 wouldn't actually be released until most of
the problems above are solved?
Most of those "problems" aren't problems, as far as I can see. To break
them down...
1) Loss of Ada support, until such time as the Ada front end is
gimplified. This will be a major problem for all Ada users. 3)
Loss of all externally maintained front ends, such as Pascal and
Mercury, until such time that they are all gimplified.
I think this is likely to be one of the few "real" problems -- the
losses of front-ends that don't support the new architecture. However,
support for those languages will continue in GCC3, and the communities
for tsuch languages *can* gimplify their frontends, I would assume.
2) Replacing the f77 front end with the f95 front end. This will
be noticed by many Fortran users.
This is a huge PLUS, from oh-so-many perspectives. Discussions in the
gfortran mailing list and comp.lang.fortran make it abundantly clear
that the fortran community *needs* a free Fortran 77 compiler. I haven't
tried running too much Fortran 77 code through the new compiler, so I'm
not certain how high the pain level is... that's something I'll be doing
in the next couple of weeks.
One nice thing about Open Source -- you can always keep using the older
versions; g77 will always be there.
4) The addition of new infrastructure, which will require all gcc
developers to re-educate themselves.
A challenge; the new architecture appears to be much superior to the
old. People will need to learn, and some new people may come on board.
Education is good.
5) The addition of new optimization passes which are likely to
cause new classes of bugs for users, and also probably new classes
of features.
Which is why people like me are startign to use tree-ssa in production
environments, to whack as many bugs and problems as we can.
Change always unsettles people; by maintaining both GCC3 and GCC4, we
provide choices that ease the transition.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Software Invention for High-Performance Computing
In development: Alex, a database for common folk