GCC 4.0 vs. 3.5

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:

| I continue to believe that major version number increments should only
| happen when backward compatibility is deliberately broken, and not in
| a way that users have been acclimatized to, e.g. the continual
| revision of the C++ abi doesn't count.

While as a C++ user, I'm quite pleased to see that C++ is taken
seriously as base criteria, I also strongly believe that it should not
be the only main focus for evaluating when to switch to 4.0.
In fact, if we shouljd be focusing only ono what happens to C or C++
codes with tree-ssa, I would think that various reports on generated
codes improvements actually justify the switch to 4.0.
Also, making the bump to 4.0 leaves enought room for releasing from
the current infrastructure versions of GCC that could not be
considered as dot releases by the current standard of 3.4.x releases. 

In all, I'm profondly unconvinced by the arguments for not making the
bump to 4.0.

[...]

| I only countenanced the 2->3 bump because it was necessary to make
| clear to users that the forked development effort was over (and

unconvincing: that forked development effort was already made clearly
over before we released 2.95, and was emphasized by calling the
released product *GCC* 2.95.

-- Gaby