RFC: GCC 4.4 criteria - add Fortran as primary language?

[David Daney]

Joe Buck wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 02:27:27PM -0800, Tim Prince wrote:
>> Joel Sherrill wrote:
>>> Tobias Burnus wrote:
>>>> According to the GCC 4.4 Release Criteria,
>>>> http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/criteria.html, only C and C++ are primary
>>>> languages. And thus only C and C++ regressions can be release critical.
>>>>
>>>> I propose to add Fortran to these languages. Reasons:
>>>>
>>>> - Fortran is relatively widely used; while C/C++ is wider used,
>>>> distributions and to a lesser users compile also libraries such as BLAS,
>>>> LAPACK etc. which are written in Fortran
>>>>
>>>> - gfortran has few (known;-) regressions. Currently, PR33296 and 
>>>> PR32841.
>>>>  
>>> My first thought is does gfortran support and have
>>> similarly good test results on all primary and secondary
>>> platforms.
>> How would anyone judge this, except by referring to gcc-testresults?
>> gfortran developers have cleared up a number of secondary platform 
>> problems whose counterparts have been allowed to remain in the "primary" 
>> language.  In my experience, this supports the "actively maintained" point.
> 
> Maybe there could be a "semi-primary" or "experimental primary" status;
> a feature could be treated as primary, but with the understanding that
> the requirement will be waived if it causes excessive delay.  The
> "experimental" label could be dropped after a few successful releases.

What is the real purpose of being a primary language?

In practice, the release managers seem to give quite a bit of weight to 
regressions in non-primary languages.  As long as the Fortran 
maintainers continue their good work, we will have excellent Fortran 
support on many of GCC's targets.  The only benefit I can really see is 
that it makes good PR (Public Relations).

gcj and libgcj, in my opinion, are in similarly good shape.  Should java 
be made a primary language as well?  Many of the same arguments would apply.

Also there are several 'Primary Platforms' that are bare-metal elf 
targets.  How well does gfortran run on those?

I am not against changing gfortran's status, I am just trying to 
understand what the real benefits would be.

David Daney