GCC developers and standards development

[James Dennett]

"Joseph S. Myers" wrote:
> 
> Are any GCC developers (including developers for language front ends not
> yet distributed with GCC) actively involved with the relevant language
> standards committees?

I'm not a gcc developer, but I track this mailing list as well as
moderating comp.std.c++, and I recently joined the BSI's C++ panel.
I've used gcc since about 2.5.8 (which makes me a newbie compared
to many here for sure), and I now help out once in a while trawling
the gcc gnats database for any bugs I can deal with quickly.

> It has from time to time been noted that there was a lack of GCC input
> (beyond public comments from some people) into C9X development, and that
> committee members weren't familiar with GCC extensions.  It was also for a
> long time the case that GNU seemed to prefer its own version of "embrace
> and extend" to standards and portability.  While the latter has improved,
> has the former (lack of involvement in standards development)?

I believe that the Standards community look favourably on gcc
both as being passably close to conformance at this time and
as being a useful proving ground for extensions, but I don't
know how well this is communicated to the Standards groups in
general.

-- James Dennett <jdennett@gcc.gnu.org> / <jdennett@acm.org>