Re: Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?

[Jim Wilson <wilson at specifixinc dot com>]

Devang Patel wrote:
> hmm... this has started long thread about next release's version number,
> but as I understand, 3.4 is scheduled for _early_ 2004. I'm not sure
> about schedule for next release. Will it be time based or feature based ?

I didn't forget about the original question.

Since most of our work is done by FSF volunteers, it isn't possible to 
say with any certainty when a release will appear, or what it will contain.

If gcc-3.4 follows the history of gcc-3.1 and gcc-3.3, then we can 
expect the release in May 2004.  See the timeline for past releases
	http://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html#timeline
However, history is no indication of future performance.  This is just a 
low confidence prediction.

For tree-ssa, there seems to be a lot of sentiment to include it after 
gcc-3.4 branches, but as yet there has been no formal decision, nor is 
it clear what the decision making process will be.  If it does go in, as 
seems likely, I think it will destabilize the tree, delaying the next 
release to early 2005.  While there has been reasonable testing for some 
major linux platforms, most embedded targets have probably not been 
tested yet, and there are some front end issues (like Ada) that still 
need to be solved.  There is also the question of whether a release 
containing tree-ssa will be a 3.x or a 4.x compiler.
--
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com