GCC association with the FSF

[Ian Lance Taylor]

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 4:36 AM Pankaj Jangid <pankaj@codeisgreat.org> wrote:
>
> I think, it would be great help if someone can document what the SC
> does.

I don't know whether anybody actually tried to answer this.

The main job of the GCC steering committee is to confirm GCC
maintainers: the people who have the right to approve changes to
specific parts of GCC, and the people who have the right to make
changes to specific parts of GCC without requiring approval from
anybody else.  These people are listed in the MAINTAINERS file in the
gcc repository (currently
https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=blob;f=MAINTAINERS;h=db25583b37b917102b001c0025d90ee0bc12800f;hb=HEAD),
from the start of the file down to the list of "Write After Approval"
people.

A secondary job of the GCC steering committee is to approve new
additions to GCC that are not under the GPL for one reason or another.
This happens rarely.

A tertiary job of the GCC steering committee is to decide disputes
between maintainers that the maintainers are unable to resolve.  I
can't recall this ever happening.

The GCC steering committee is in principle a place to make decisions
that affect the entire project.  There are very few such decisions.
One was the decision to change the implementation language of GCC from
C to C++, a decision made in 2010.  Another was the decision to allow
GCC plugins.  As a counter-example, moving GCC from Subversion to git
was supported by the steering committee members, but there was no
formal decision by the steering committee to approve the move.

More generally, the GCC steering committee has historically served as
a point of contact between the FSF and the GCC developers.  In my
opinion this has not amounted to much over the years that I've been on
the committee (since 2014).

Ian