GCC priorities [Was Re: We're out of tree codes; now what?]

[Paul Brook]

> Exactly.  I'm viewing the mission statement as the moral equivalent of a
> constitution -- the highest guidelines that you fall back on when
> everything else fails.  Your first paragraph above indicates that you view
> it similarly.  But it's currently so vague that I don't imagine it's much
> use... it's like a legal constitution that says "be nice to everybody".

The problem is that I don't think writing a detailed "mission statement" is 
actually going to help anything. It's either going to be gcc contributors 
writing down what they're doing anyway, or something invented by the SC or 
FSF. I the latter case nothing's going to change because neither the SC nor 
the FSF have any practical means of compelling contributors to work on a 
particular feature.

It's been said before that Mark (the GCC release manager) has no real power to 
make anything actually happen. All he can do is delay the release and hope 
things get better.

> Maybe I'm wrong, but to return to the original topic, I don't expect
> to see compile-time performance improve significantly in any future
> release.

I'm not aware of anyone putting serious effort into improving compile-time 
performance, so you may well be right.

Paul