Re: GCC 3.5 Status (2004-08-29)

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

Steven Bosscher wrote:

> On Monday 30 August 2004 01:17, Mark Mitchell wrote:
>  
>
> > The following changes will be postponed until GCC 3.6.  These changes
> > either provide too little benefit, are too risky, or will take too
> > much time to complete.
> >
> > * Aliasing improvements for structure fields [Berlin]
> >
> >    
> But you should
> realize that this analysis is absolutely critical if GCC 3.5 is going
> to perform reasonably well.
>  
I am not convinced of this statement. 

First, the compiler speed argument mostly affects optimizing 
compilations, where compile-times are much less critical than 
non-optimizing compilations.  I'm sure that people will want to argue 
this point, but I've been talking with customers for a decade and the 
ones concerned about compile-times are almost always willing to have 
optimizing compilation take longer.

Second, Dan said it will take 2-3 months to complete this work.  That's 
a lot of time, and indicates a big project.  I am confident that there 
are alternatives that, while perhaps less comprehensive, get enough of 
the common cases to achieve most of the benefits.

Third, if this change is so vital, then we should be willing to drop 
some other changes in favor of this one, so that people can work with 
Dan to finish this one.  Why don't you suggest some changes that are 
already on the list that you'd be willing to give up?

--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
(916) 791-8304
mark@codesourcery.com