Re: C++ PATCH:

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:

| Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| 
| > Lower forms appear because currently we do not do a good in the
| > front-end  and pretty-printer telling which level of abstraction is
| > preferred.  I noted initial effort in that direction has already
| > been undermined by you.  Since, no technical reason was given, I must
| > assume it is political.
| 
| I really wanted to avoid a flame war with you.
| 
| But, I don't see how I can fail to respond to this statement.  I don't
| have any idea to what you're referring, and I certainly don't have any
| "political" reasons for approving or disapproving patches with respect
| to lowering in the C++ front end.  In fact, I've long championed
| having a high-level and low-level representation.  (Though I don't
| think even the high-level representation need allow one to reconstruct
| the source code, parenthesis-for-parenthesis.)

Having a high-level representation of programs certainly does not
necessarily imply character for character rendering, but it does
enable a rendering accurate for most situations we run into.

| > That statement is factually false as can be verified with EDG-3.5:
| >
| >    "b.C", line 3: error: expected an expression
| >         if (int i = {0})
| >                     ^
| 
| I've worked extensively on and with the EDG front end, and have a very
| good idea how it works.
| 
| That's printed by having accurate source position information, and
| then printing the relevant line from the source file.  It is not

That is one way of doing it.  Its C++ unparser -- that does dump the
source seuqnece list -- also does a pretty good job and it is being
improved. 

[...]

|  > If it is another instance of
| > of maintainerhisp abuse based on fallacy, contrary to GCC mission
| > statement you're probably right.
| 
| I'm sorry you feel so wronged, but I find the insults that you've put
| in this email to be totally inappropriate.  If you don't think I'm fit
| to be a C++ maintainer, ask the SC to remove me.  If you don't think
| I'm doing a good job as a C++ maintainer, please bring that up with
| me, publicly or privately, and explain what you think I'm doing wrong.
| But why do you think that insulting me will change anything for the
| better?

I don't think it makes sense or it serves any useful purpose removing
you from maintainership, although I believe you should exercise it
with more openness.   

Bringing issues for meaningful discussion with you assumes that you're
actually willing (not just saying you're open for discussion when
you've already made up your mind) to discuss.  In the past, I had tried
approaching you privately; but my conclusion was that it is a pointless
exercise.  For the pattern seems to be:  "I'm not willing to discuss
this topic further; I already made up my mind", from the outset.
For example, I raised the possibility of having the C++ front-end
compilable with a C++ compiler.  You impenetrably opposed the idea on
the ground that you had extensive experience with X projects and that
was a bad idea and you're unwilling to discuss further the idea,
without actually looking at what was being proposed.  That same
idea expressed later by someone else received your approval/support.

[...]

| expression-printers. (However, I've never had the time or energy to
| work through the process of implementing the caret approach, which is
| definitely a lot of work, and would necessarily include working
| through issues about the GNU standards for error messages, etc.)

That certainly would require changing many things, e.g. Emacs support
and like.  That is a reason why I approach this issue conservatively.


| When I've made up my mind, I think it's a lot more useful to tell
| you that, than to waste everyone's time pretending I've not come to
| a conclusion.  Even then, I'm always willing to be persuaded
| otherwise --  

But that is self-contradictory: "being persuaded otherwise"
assumes dialog; that can't happen when you're unwilling to discuss the
issues on the ground that it would be a long discussion wasting
everybody's time.

-- Gaby