GCC 4.0 vs. 3.5

[Joe Buck]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 07:33:56AM -0400, Richard Kenner wrote:
> I'd like to reopen the discussion of the next version number of GCC.
> 
> I think that tree-ssa is a large enough change to justify moving to 4.0.

I agree.  Version number changes are basically about marketing and
communication (it's new! it's improved!), so in that sense they are
arbitrary.  But a planned bump to a 4.0 version number will cause the
world (at least the software developer world) to pay some attention to
GCC.
 
> It's certainly a larger change than from GCC 2 to GCC 3 and from GCC 1
> to GCC 2.

Agreed (from an internals perspective).  From a user perspective, GCC 2 to
GCC 3 was larger for C++ users, but from the point of view of contributors
to the compiler and writers of front ends, tree-ssa is huge, and for Fortran
users g95 is a very big deal.

In the end, it's the SC's call, but certainly the views of the developers
will be taken into account.