Re: Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?

["Zack Weinberg" <zack at codesourcery dot com>]

Ian Lance Taylor <ian@wasabisystems.com> writes:

> More generally, your objection to making the next release be 4.x
> seems to be that you set a very high bar to changing the major
> version number.  But why do you set that high bar?  What bad things
> will happen if the next gcc release is 4.0 rather than 3.5?  That
> is, is your objection purely philosophical, or is there an objective
> basis for it?  When saying this, I don't mean to discount
> philosophical objections; those do matter, particularly in community
> projects like this one.  I just want to clarify.

My criteria for a major version number bump are mostly the same as
yours -- I regret having overstated them earlier.

I think it's best to describe my objection as an assessment of the
tree-ssa project.  Unlike (it seems) an awful lot of people, I just
don't think it's going to be that disruptive.  It's replacing
optimizers with better ones; it's not introducing new spiffy
extensions or taking them away or doing IPA across the whole program.
It may make other, disruptive changes *possible* but I don't see it as
breaking that much in itself for end users.

Now, your point about breaking front-end/back-end interfaces is well
taken.  Again I doubt it is that bad to convert an externally
maintained front end to the new interface but I could be wrong.  If it
turns out to be hard, that might be enough justification for a major
version bump.  But do we know that now?  I'd rather wait until closer
to release time, when it becomes clearer what the situation is.

zw