Of Bounties and Mercenaries

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Floating point performance is an example of a an issue so diffuse that
> nobody feels responsible for fixing it.  On the other hand, Red Hat
> and others (or perhaps a silent backer) are investing a great deal of
> money in the tree-ssa reworking of gcc infrastructure, so this sort of
> general overhaul is indeed possible.

In general, numericists may not be in a good position to influence GCC 
development. Coming from academic and government sources, they can have 
trouble allocating funds for soemthing like "improving GCC," as it is 
not part of their specific mandate.

One reason I'm educating myself about tree-ssa is so I can work on 
gfortran, a project unlikely to excite much fervor inside the halls of 
Red Hat and SuSE. The numerical market is small, and Fortran 95 poorly 
understood and appreciated outside its (surprisingly large) community.

> Part of the problem is that gcc has become sufficiently complex that
> it is difficult for the uninitiated to fix a bug.  Thus gcc partially
> loses one of the usual advantages of free software--the fact that bugs
> can be fixed by people with an itch to scratch.

I completely agree; tree-ssa is, in my mind, easier to work with and 
understand. I've looked at working on GCC PRs,a nd simply haven't the 
time to invest in understanding the non-tree-ssa architecture. The 
complexity of GCC makes it very difficult for people to simply jump in 
and help out.

-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Software Invention for High-Performance Computing