Objective-C bugs and GCC releases

[Patrick McFarland]

Mark Mitchell wrote:
> I would indeed hold up the release because of C++ breakage.  C++ is a 
> release-critical language; Objective-C is not.  That's very much 
> analagous to the fact that IA32 GNU/Linux is a release-critical 
> platform; other systems like SH ELF are not.

How is Objective-C not a release-critical language?

1) Quite a few people use it
2) GCC is the only useful ObjC compiler out there
3) Apple would rather not deal with GCC dev fucktardism
4) Gnustep would rather not deal with GCC dev fucktardism

> The SC has to make some tough decisions, analagous to those that would 
> be made by product management in a proprietary software development 
> environment.  However, unlike that situation, there's still something 
> people interested in the de-prioritized feature can do: keep it working.

But GCC isn't a commercial venture. It is an open source project. We 
(the open source community) don't have deadlines, we don't need to worry 
about making money. All we need to do is worry that our software isn't 
the absolute best that we can produce.

And if GCC ships with broken Objective-C, it is not the absolute best.

-- 
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || unknown@panax.com
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as 
kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills 
and listening to repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, 
Nintendo, Inc, 1989