Backport Policy Question

[Erik Edelmann]

On Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 10:00:36AM +0200, François-Xavier Coudert wrote:
> >I thought it might be helpful to review this a bit as well as the rules we 
> >are
> >going to follow for the 4.3 trunk.
> 
> I'm in favour of:
>  -- bug fixes only for 4.2; and my understanding of bug-fix doesn't
> include performance fixes (be they for compilation time or execution
> time), nor reworking of currently existing code for better
> maintainability

I agree.

>  -- GCC rules on 4.3 and later branches; I know we've already said
> that about 4.2, but I seriously think there are only a limited number
> of features that aren't yet in 4.2 and that are will be an
> excruciating pain in the ass for users not to have in 4.3.
> 
> But the second point means that we need to decide now what features we
> want to integrate into 4.3, and start working on those rather quickly,
> because stages 1 & 2 don't last forever.

Again, I agree. However, like Paul, I feel that during the next few
months we should give high priority to bug fixes.  It's not that I'm
againts new features, performance enhancements or reworkings; it's just
that there's a little bit too many bugs for my taste.  Or to put it
slightly differently; the next goal I would like to achieve with
gfortran is to be able to call it a mature compiler ;-).

Personally, I intend to stick mainly to bugfixes and, at most, some
smaller new things (e.g. INTENT for pointers) during the 4.3 development
cycle (in case I do anything at all; there are a few other things in
life that is going to need my attention during the next few coming
months).


        Erik