pre egcs-1.1 testing and Linux 2.1.x

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 199808232013.NAA17142@dm.cobaltmicro.com >you write:
  >    Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:06:52 -0700 (PDT)
  >    From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
  > 
  >    But I personally never had Kenner disable a feature because I could
  >    reproduce a bug with it. When you told Kenner of a bug he acknowledged i
  >    as a bug.
  > 
  > BULLSHIT, remember that whole "local label in inline function" fiasco?
  > That was a Kenner change in Kenner's tree, that I wanted to kill
  > before it got merged into the egcs tree.  Case closed.
  > 
  > Don't make false claims.  Kenner in this case did in fact disable a
  > feature instead of fixing the problem.
100% correct on the "local label in inline function" issue.

But I think folks may be missing an important point.  Poorly conceived and
designed features should be removed, or disabled.  That goes for any
hunk of software, whether its the compiler, kernel, libraries, etc.

I wonder if folks fail to understand that the egcs project is picking
up an existing code base and trying to move forward.  egcs did not make
the decision to include (for example) regparm in the first place.  Had
it been our decision it *may* not have gone into the compiler.

In fact, several of us argued against regparm inclusion in gcc2 because 
it could not be reliably implemented.  But it went in anyway and was
documented and now leaves egcs holding the bag so to speak because
people are trying to use it and running into problems.



jeff