Re: GCC Status (2004-08-09)

[kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)]

    Raising the bar for cleanups is perfectly appropriate for the later 
    stages of a release; almost every substantial cleanup in GCC has 
    introduced a new set of bugs.

Indeed.

My point is that I don't feel enough time has elapsed since major changes
have ended (we're not even really there *yet* and August is a month when lots
of people are away) to declare a few weeks from now as "the later stages of a
release".

My suggestion was to pick a point 2-3 weeks from now and declare the start of
a new stage aimed at *both* fixing bugs and doing cleanups and more
integration of what's been done before.  Then after a few weeks of that (say,
near the end of September), we declare a full Stage 3.

    If you had a really compelling cleanup that was going to make it much
    easier to fix other bugs, I'm sure people would go along with that.

The problem is that most cleanups aren't compelling in that sense, but
cleanups are best done shortly after things they are cleaning up are first
installed.  My concern is that if we don't leave time to do that work now, it
may never get done because it will no longer be fresh on people's minds.