Re: Reenabling Ada by default

[kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)]

    The internet is a large enough place that I expect at least copies
    of gcc and its mail archives to exist until the global apocalypse.
    I do not expect the same to be true for any given corporation.

Sure, but I don't understand what data you are talking about losing.
There are three potential types of data:

(1) patches
(2) test cases
(3) discussions of patches

Patches are available via either CVS or the gcc-patches list whether they
are batched or not.

We've spoken about test cases before.

#3 is the trickier one.  But what's important to realize is that for the vast
majority of patches, there's no data of that kind anywhere.  Most of the
patches you do are in the same category: the only "discussion" is within your
own skull.

For the small fraction where that's not the case, there is usually an
additional difficulty in publicizing that discussion that hasn't been
addressed here yet and it's not just a resource issue.

A discussion of a bug will, by its nature, refer to the customer test case,
which cannot be made public.  Sure, it's possible to "sanitize" that test
case, but usually not until the bug has been understood, which is *after*
those discussions.  Even when it can be sanitized earlier, requiring it be
done before the discussions take place in order to allow them to occur in
public will put an additional item on the critical path for the customer to
have their bug fixed.  That's a serious problem.

So can you be a little more specific about what data you are concerned about
being preserved?

    The policy of the gcc community is that patch discussion, approval,
    and application happens in a particular manner.  

Sure, but that "manner" is significantly different when somebody with
maintainer privilege on a part of the compiler is doing the patch, as would
be the case with all ACT folks patching the front end, vs. somebody who
doesn't have such a privilege.  And what Arno is doing is really not all
that much different than that procedure: basically all that's happening is
that he's acting as a surrogate for the other people.