Re: Radical proposal: skip 3.4

[Jim Wilson <wilson at specifixinc dot com>]

I agree with the comment Steve Bosscher made.  The number of bugs in 
bugzilla is not a good indication of the quality of gcc mainline.  It is 
more an indication of how many people are using gcc, and how many are 
using the bugzilla database.  Back when we were doing gcc-3.0, people 
would report bugs directly to gcc-bugs, and then they would be lost. 
Nowadays, they accumulate in the bug database, and don't disappear 
unless they are fixed.  Also, there are a lot more people using gcc-3.3 
than there were using gcc-3.0, and hence there are more people finding 
bugs.  That doesn't mean that there are more bugs, just that more are 
being reported.

There are already so many people working on branches that I don't see 
much benefit to delaying the creation of the gcc-3.4 release branch.  It 
will just encourage more people to shift from the mainline to branches. 
 If Geoff Keating goes ahead and makes the 3.5 branch, that will just 
encourage even more people to work on branches.

Volunteers are generally better at contributing development work than 
bug fixes.  Development work is more interesting than bug fixing if you 
are doing this as a hobby.  The people who are most useful for bug 
fixing are the people who work for OS companies that use gcc.  But the 
longer we keep putting off the gcc-3.4 release, the less reason they 
have to work on it.  Threaten to make a gcc-3.4 release tomorrow, and 
people at OS companies will suddenly start helping fix bugs in it.

However, if we try to hurry this, we may end up with a situation where 
gcc-3.4 has too many bugs, and the OS companies just make their own 
release branches off of gcc-3.4 and put bug fixes there.  There is a 
delicate balance here.
--
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com