Re: GCC 4.5.0 Released

[Basile Starynkevitch <basile at starynkevitch dot net>]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:50:48AM +0200, Richard Guenther wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:04 AM, Basile Starynkevitch
> <basile@starynkevitch.net> wrote:
> > Mark Mitchell wrote:
> >>
> >> The Free Software Foundation and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)
> >> development team have released GCC 4.5.0. ?[...]
> >
> >
> > It is really unfortunate the annoucement did not mention plugins, another
> > major feature of GCC. Why ?
> 
> I see plugins as a new feature for GCC developers.  There is little
> value in announcing "we have plugin support" to our users if
> you can't name at least one that is supported out-of-the-box

I respectfully but strongly disagree with that statement. There is a
lot of value in announcing we have plugin support, because that simple
fact enable GCC users (at least those who use GCC to compile code
there are contributing to develop) to develop their simple plugins or
ask somebody else to develop plugins for them. This makes a major
difference for the few power users needing extra features in their GCC
Compiler (previously, the only way was to fork their own private
branch, a much larger and fragile effort than developping a plugin,
with the tremendous burden that users of such a branch have to build
it by their own).

> (and obviously we don't support plugins at all).

I also disagree with and even don't understand that sentence. GCC 4.5
does support plugins (since plugins exist in 4.5 but not in previous
releases), and I am sure that several companies selling GCC support
will be delighted to be suitably paid to develop plugins.

Besides, GCC users have a pecularity. Since they are using a compiler
(obviously GCC), they understand better than others what software
source code is, and probably what software development means. So there
are more chances that some GCC power users would want to develop a
plugin.

Of course, plugins development from outside the GCC community will
increase very progressively. But plugin is a *major* feature of 4.5,
[in my eyes] as important as link-time-optimization.


> 
> How would you have announced the plugin parts to GCC users?

I am not a native english speaker, but something like the following
paragraph [to be added after the paragraph: GCC 4.5.0 is now capable
of "link-time optimization". ... and equally significant reductions in
code size.]

   GCC 4.5.0 accept plugins (on some host systems, in particular
   Linux, if configured appropriately). This permits advanced users to
   customize or extend their GCC compiler with specific code provided
   in plugins enabling extra features -such as new specific
   optimization or diagnostic passes, etc.- suitable for their
   particular needs. Plugins should be GPLv3 compatible.

Also, in practice, at least in the Linux and some embedded software
worlds, new releases of GCC diffuse very slowly... So it is ok if some
power users just start developping their plugin now.

Cheers.

-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
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