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Re: Designs for better debug info in GCC
On Dec 16, 2007, "Daniel Berlin" <dberlin@dberlin.org> wrote:
>> It is obvious that you misunderstood what I want, and how intrusive
>> the approach is.
> Yes Alexandre, everyone who disagrees with you must not understand!
My conclusion is not based on disagreement, but rather on the faulty
arguments presented during the discussion.
For example, when you took the argument that every transformation had
effects on debug information, and used that to conclude that every
transformation would need difficult changes to generate correct debug
information, you left out from your reasoning a major strength of the
design, that I had mentioned in the e-mail you responded to: that the
optimizers already perform the transformations we need to keep debug
information accurate.
So, by missing or misunderstanding an essential part of the thought
process that went into the design, you came to a false conclusion
about it.
> That's really the problem here.
> None of us understand but you.
I guess I'm to blame, for having naÃvely put the code out without as
much as a design and goals document, such that people started looking
at it without actually understanding what it was about, and at the
same time taking conclusions about it based on hunches rather than on
solid logical grounds.
At this point, we have a scenario in which people have already jumped
to their conclusions, and whatever I say requires a much higher
threshold to be listened to and accepted. It's quite unfortunate that
psychological factors take such a large role in the making of
technical decisions, and I naÃvely assumed this wouldn't raise so much
rejection, for being such a simple and well thought-out design. Oh,
well... Something to avoid next time...
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}