Objective-C bugs and GCC releases

[Mark Mitchell]

Nicola Pero wrote:
>>>All the information which was passed out is "the Objective-C frontend 
>>>won't work in GCC 4.0" and as a happy cc1obj user without any issues so 
>>>far I think it is completely valid to ask for clarification even though 
>>>I'm not a GCC internals expert.
>>
>>No such announcement was ever made.  What Mark announced was that
>>Objective-C bugs would not be treated as release-critical.  What this does
>>is to impose a time limit on getting Objective-C bug fixes into the
>>compiler.
> 
> 
> Mark should have put the spotlight on asking for help in fixing the bugs.  
> This is a large mailing list of ObjC users and developers and he could 
> easily get help.

I agree that I could have put a more positive spin on it: "if you will 
step in help, then we can have great Objective-C in 4.0!" rather than 
"if nothing happens, we may not have good Objective C in 4.0."  However, 
I did try to encourage people to submit patches at a couple of points.

> Instead he chose to put the spotlight on explaining to this same large
> mailing list of ObjC zealots why he doesn't care if Objective-C works or 
> not when he makes a release.

That is an overstatement.  I've never said I didn't care: only that 
Objective-C was not release-critical and that I would not hold up the 
release on account of Objective-C.

I meant exactly what I said.

I really feel about this exactly as I feel about the SH port; I'd really 
like for it to work, but if it doesn't happen, I'll go forward with the 
release.

Regards,

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark@codesourcery.com
(916) 791-8304