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Re: [tree-ssa] Merge status
- From: Mike Stump <mrs at apple dot com>
- To: law at redhat dot com
- Cc: "Joseph S. Myers" <jsm at polyomino dot org dot uk>, Ian Lance Taylor <ian at wasabisystems dot com>, Jason Merrill <jason at redhat dot com>, Diego Novillo <dnovillo at redhat dot com>, Paolo Bonzini <bonzini at gnu dot org>, "gcc-patches at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc-patches at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:31:23 -0800
- Subject: Re: [tree-ssa] Merge status
On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 06:31 AM, law@redhat.com wrote:
Assuming that's the case, I would _expect_ that these developers will
happily
fix their code when the problems are pointed out.
I've had that experience to some degree, but also the opposite. People
that don't want to maintain code that just want it to compile, because
it used to compile before. They really hate it when it just _stops_
compiling. The code is often not theirs, but rather comes from a 3rd
party or they are doing porting (they are the 3rd party). They just
want it to compile.
Additionally, there is the case where you want to develop and test a
new compiler against the entire OS build, but you can't because things
don't compile, and therefore, you can't test, therefore you loose
testing, which is bad. The project owners are busy working on real
development and don't always want to be bothered with the minor
maintenance. They'll get around to doing it, but they want to schedule
it and do it at a different time. The problem is, in the intervening
timeframe you've lost all testing that could have been done.
Also, even if they were willing to do the changes, they want to do them
in their top of tree, which, isn't the stable testing source you wanted
to test, but rather the build of the day software of the next OS that
may or may not work, which defeats the entire purpose of building and
testing it.
These issues aren't new or surprising, but I thought I would point them
out to balance your statement.