Why not contribute? (to GCC)

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 24 April 2010 14:12, Ross Ridge <rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> I can have my own patched version of GCC that does what I want without
> signing anything.

Then we change that code and your patch is broken. Or your patch has a
bug and you never find out. Or we decide to remove something essential
for your patch to work because we think nobody is using it.

> I also just don't need the abuse.  GCC, while not the most of hostile of
> open source projects out there, it's up there.  Manuel López-Ibáñez's
> unjustified hostility towards Michael Witten in this thread is just a
> small example.

Perhaps his intention was not trolling but it strongly felt like that
given past behaviour.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2008-01/msg00304.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00542.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00583.html

It wasn't my intention to be hostile just to state the obvious: If you
feel gcc is doomed, why are you still in this list repeating this
mantra over and over? does it make you feel better? how is that not
trolling?

But I have also found previous good posts, so it was a mistake from my
part to assume he was trolling.


> Finally, it's also a lot of work.  Just building GCC can be pain, having
> to find upto date versions of a growing list of math libraries that
> don't benefit me in the slightest way.  Running the test suite takes a
> long time, so even trivial patches require a non-trivial amount of work.

Everything is already setup for you here:

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm

I have a script that allows me to do the following in a single step:

gccfarming cleanup
gccfarming bootstrap
gccfarming patch PATCH=mypatch.diff
gccfarming bootstrap
compare_tests clean.log mypatch.log

It takes computer time, yes, but I am not in a hurry. If I were, I
would use one of the computers with 8 or 16 cores.

Cheers,

Manuel.