Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?

[Zack Weinberg <zack at codesourcery dot com>]

Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org> writes:

> On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 15:13 -0700, Stan Shebs wrote:
>> Steven Bosscher wrote:
>> >If someone had cared about them, it would have been noticed
>> >earlier.  But since _nobody_ has complained before you, I guess we
>> >can conclude that by far the majority if GCC users are quite happy
>> >with the cost assesments that were made.
>> >
>> No, there have been plenty of complaints, but the GCC mailing lists
>> have, shall we say, a "reputation", and a great many users will not
>> post to them,
>
> I've never in my life heard this from another mailing list, and i
> contribute to a *great* many open source projects.

I have seen such complaints.  Not about bootstrap times, no, that only
affects people who compile the compiler; but the more general case of
'gcc takes forever to compile this program' does appear on a regular
basis.

I do also think that the amount of ridicule heaped on people who come
to the gcc lists is, in general, too high.  People should not be
ridiculed for complaining that the compiler is slow, even if they are
insisting on using vintage hardware.  It is slow, even on fast
hardware; it's just easier to see that on slow hardware.  Rather more
importantly, people should not be ridiculed for submitting bug
reports, even if they are wrong.  I suspect the bad public image that
Stan refers to, has more to do with this than anything else.  To be
fair, it can be hard to explain that someone is wrong without
belittling them; but it is important to make the effort, particularly
when the reason they are wrong is esoteric (e.g. any of the legion of
counterintuitive things in the C standard).

Some people are worthy of ridicule; those who are trolling, or those
who are persistently and wilfully clueless.  However, ridicule is
*not* an effective way of making these people shut up and go away,
which is the appropriate goal when dealing with them.  It can be fun
to argue with them, but long argument threads are a drag on the
mailing list, so we should not make a habit of it.  This is not
alt.flame.

> The only person i see ridiculing people frequently happens to be
> from @apple.com.

I can think of four people who regularly ridicule posters.  Only two
of them are Apple employees.

zw