Re: RFC: GCC 4.4 criteria - add Fortran as primary language?

[Joel Sherrill <joel dot sherrill at oarcorp dot com>]

Joe Buck wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 02:27:27PM -0800, Tim Prince wrote:
>   
> > Joel Sherrill wrote:
> >     
> > > Tobias Burnus wrote:
> > >       
> > > > According to the GCC 4.4 Release Criteria,
> > > > http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/criteria.html, only C and C++ are primary
> > > > languages. And thus only C and C++ regressions can be release critical.
> > > >
> > > > I propose to add Fortran to these languages. Reasons:
> > > >
> > > > - Fortran is relatively widely used; while C/C++ is wider used,
> > > > distributions and to a lesser users compile also libraries such as BLAS,
> > > > LAPACK etc. which are written in Fortran
> > > >
> > > > - gfortran has few (known;-) regressions. Currently, PR33296 and
> > > > PR32841.
> > > >
> > > >         
> > > My first thought is does gfortran support and have
> > > similarly good test results on all primary and secondary
> > > platforms.
> > >       
> > How would anyone judge this, except by referring to gcc-testresults?
> > gfortran developers have cleared up a number of secondary platform
> > problems whose counterparts have been allowed to remain in the "primary"
> > language.  In my experience, this supports the "actively maintained" point.
> >     
>
> Maybe there could be a "semi-primary" or "experimental primary" status;
> a feature could be treated as primary, but with the understanding that
> the requirement will be waived if it causes excessive delay.  The
> "experimental" label could be dropped after a few successful releases.
>   
I think that sounds reasonable.  This won't be
the last language, library, etc that will want to
move up in status.

--joel

--
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel.sherrill@OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
  Support Available             (256) 722-9985