Re: Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?

[Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot com>]

On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 10:50:05AM -0500, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> Personally, I think forking GCC is a Bad Idea.

But in the sense that we're talking about, most well-known free software
projects fork.  For the Linux kernel, 2.4.x won't be abandoned when 2.6
is released.

> Yet I also don't see why anyone would commit funds to gfortran if it 
> will never be released because the Ada (or C++, or Java) frontend 
> doesn't work. Nor would I be sanguine about funding all of GCC when my 
> primary interest is Fortran 95.
> 
> And thus my original question: nder *current circumstances*, will 
> tree-ssa become a released project, and if so, what is a good guess for 
> its release?
> 
> So far, I have a good sense of when 3.4 will be released (May or so, 
> 2004). I have yet to get an answer for tree-ssa. The lack of such an 
> answer is, in itself, and answer: tree-ssa (and thus gfortran) is too 
> theoretical to be considered, and other alternatives must be explored.

For any software project, there is a tradeoff between schedule, features,
and quality.  Most proprietary software houses are run by the marketing
team, which promises customers a specific set of features on a specific
date.  This leaves only quality as a trade-off when the software is late,
as it almost inevitably is.  That's why it is typical for, for example,
Microsoft products not to be really usable until the third major release.

Free software, on the other hand, attempts to adjust the tradeoffs in a
different way; sometimes dropping features, sometimes slipping schedule,
often doing both.

> If that is the situation, we move on, and wish you well.

I think that you can be fairly confident that there will be no officially
shipped tree-ssa production GCC until 2005.  If you need something sooner,
you will need to look elsewhere.