Re: Bernd Schmidt, release manager for GCC 2.95.3

[Bernd Schmidt <bernds at redhat dot com>]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Joe Buck wrote:

> In addition to the criteria that Bernd lists, we want to avoid any patch
> that breaks C++ binary compatibility with gcc-2.95.2.  We already have three
> different incompatible C++ compilers in common use on GNU/Linux: egcs-1.1.2,
> gcc-2.95.2, and what I'll call gcc-2.96RH.  We want to avoid creating one
> more; for one think, picking the shared library numbering would be very
> tricky for an intermediate bug-fix version.
> 
> Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to fix the vtable-thunks problem.

I'll need to rely on people with more knowledge of the C++ frontend for this
issue.  Martin, Jason, as far as I know the vtable-thunks patch has been
applied to the 2.95 branch already.  Is there any chance whatsoever that it
breaks binary compatibility?  If so, it will have to be reverted.

> > Other than the gcc regression testsuite, I can build and test a number of
> > programs across a set of platforms.  I'd like to get suggestions as to which
> > programs we should use for this, and on which platforms to test.  Preferrably
> > this should be packages that come with built-in testsuites.  Here's a list
> > of programs I plan to test on the machines available to me:
> > 1. SPEC95 (mind that we are not primarily interested in performance for this
> >    release, but we should be able to compile this set of benchmarks
> >    correctly).
> 
> As long as you are going to build SPEC95, we should make sure, at least,
> that 2.95.3 does not have a significant performance regression with
> respect to 2.95.2.

Sure.  But unless the difference is significant, it's not going to be a
factor.

> > 6. We'll need a C++ program or two.  I'm open to suggestions.
> 
> GNU Octave (use version 2.0.16, the latest).  It's the GNU project's
> Matlab replacement.  It has a test suite, also, there's lots of info
> at http://www.octave.org/ .

Thanks.


Bernd