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Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?
- From: Steven Bosscher <s dot bosscher at student dot tudelft dot nl>
- To: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Cc: Scott Robert Ladd <scott dot ladd at coyotegulch dot com>, Robert Dewar <dewar at adacore dot com>, Peter Barada <peter at the-baradas dot com>, Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot COM, hjl at lucon dot org, aph at redhat dot com, aoliva at redhat dot com, dje at watson dot ibm dot com, schwab at suse dot de, pinskia at physics dot uc dot edu, pkoning at equallogic dot com, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, matt at 3am-software dot com, cow at compsoc dot man dot ac dot uk
- Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 18:17:33 +0200
- Subject: Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?
- References: <17009.2368.986169.753001@cuddles.cambridge.redhat.com> <200505161717.31407.s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl> <1116258837.13457.68.camel@pc960.cambridge.arm.com>
On Monday 16 May 2005 17:53, Richard Earnshaw wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 16:17, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> > On Monday 16 May 2005 16:53, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> > > The problem is, a bloated GCC has no consequences for the majority of
> > > GCC developers -- their employers have other (and valid) concerns. It's
> > > less a matter of laziness than it is of not caring outside one's own
> > > backyard.
> >
> > And to second your point in an awkward way: I don't see this as a
> > problem. If all those people who think this is a problem would
> > also fund GCC development (with hard cash or with developers), who
> > knows, probably things would look different.
>
> if only it were that simple[1]. However, even if the money does get
> spent it's unlikely to help because there are too many developers that
> just DON'T CARE about (or worse, seem to be openly hostile to) making
> the compiler more efficient.
I've not seen anyone who is hostile to the idea of making the compiler
more efficient. But it is difficult to expect people to care about a
thing that is not a problem for them. I think it _would_ help if there
were people working specifically on reducing e.g. the memory footprint.
It is not like we don't know where the problems are, there is just not
a soul who cares enough to fix these problems. Most souls start caring
when there is a monetary compensation in it for them ;-)
> No company is going to spend money on fixing this until we adjust our
> (collective) attitude and take this seriously.
Agreed.
A lot of work has already been done on speeding up the compiler, but
we are not really going anywhere if we add 80+ tree passes and remove
nothing. There is also a SUSE bot that posts to gcc-regressions if
the memory footprint has increased, but people are completely ignoring
it.
> If one person can
> continue to undo the good work of a dozen others with one lousy commit
> we'll never get anywhere here.
I don't think people are deliberately sabotaging efforts to make GCC
faster/smaller/etc. And there are rules for what is considered a
regression, and for what to do with patches that cause them.
Gr.
Steven