Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?

[Joe Buck]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 05:29:25PM -0800, Jim Wilson wrote:
> For tree-ssa, there seems to be a lot of sentiment to include it after 
> gcc-3.4 branches, but as yet there has been no formal decision, nor is 
> it clear what the decision making process will be.

As Mark has pointed out, whether it is called 3.5 or 4.0 is just marketing
and not very significant.

In my view, if tree-ssa is accepted, it would go something like this:
first, the principal tree-ssa developers would need to agree that it
is ready, and they would need to be able to demonstrate this.  That
would involve being able to demonstrate that it is significantly superior
to 3.4.x for appropriate criteria (standard benchmarks), not worse in others
(compile time) and not excessively buggy.  I don't think it would be
appropriate to insist on perfection at that time with respect to bugs
and ports, but enough work would need to have been done to have reasonable
confidence that showstopper problems would be unlikely.  We would then try
to achieve consensus on this list.  After all those arguments play
themselves out, the SC would have to decide: 3/4 of the members would
need to say "yes".  I think that most SC members would be unlikely to
say "yes" if there are multiple prominent developers who object.

If there were still a front end that requires the 3.4.x framework, that
would not necessarily be a show-stopper as 3.4.x could still be maintained,
at least for bug fixes.  But this would be far from ideal.