Re: gcc 3.5 integration branch proposal

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Steven Bosscher <stevenb@suse.de> writes:

| On Monday 19 January 2004 09:31, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| > Steven Bosscher <stevenb@suse.de> writes:
| > | On Monday 19 January 2004 05:39, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| > | > "Giovanni Bajo" <giovannibajo@libero.it> writes:
| > | > | Testcases would help. We seriously do care about all the compile-time
| > | > | regressions we have in bugzilla, but we have just a few of
| > | > | them. People should really file bugreports about it.
| > | >
| > | > Strongly seconded.  In private, I've told Marc that the more people
| > | > complain (i.e. filling reports) about their being bitten by
| > | > compile-time perforamnce, the more it is likely that GCC developers
| > | > will eventually care about it.
| > |
| > | Perhaps everyone has missed some of the work Honza has done this
| > | month to kill some of the most tough bottlenecks, and perhaps
| > | nobody has seen the numbers posted by Gerald that for his C++
| > | test case we _are_ much faster than 3.3 and 3.2?
| >
| > Don't be fooled.
| 
| I hope not to be.  But the numbers from this mail are encouraging:
| http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2004-01/msg00670.html
| 
| Note that the message got zero follow-ups, which is surprising, at
| least, to me.

Let me clarify my previous message.

When I said "GCC developers will eventually care about it", I did not
mean to minimize or dismiss efforts of isolated individuals to speed
up the compiler.  However, I was referring to lack of general policy
along the lines that any patch more or less should be accompanied by
hard data showing its impact on the compile-time (yes, that is an
extreme statement  but I'm pretty sure you get the idea).  The
parallel model I have in mind is when -- long time ago, after repeated
mainline breakages for long periods -- we started requiring submitters
to clearly state on which plateforms they did bootstrap and reg-test 
the patched compiler.  From that point, it was clear that we were
taking "bootstrappable trees" seriously ;-)

-- Gaby