Re: I would like to contribute

["Martin v. Loewis" <martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de>]

> Hi, I would like to contribute to gcc.  I would like you to suggest
> a small project otherwise, I will look for the simplest problem in
> the bug list and investigate it.

You did not indicate what area you'd like to work on (some front-end,
some back-end, portability, etc). Here are a few things that could use
your attention:

1. Performance. People are observing a loss of efficiency both of the
   compiler itself, and of the generated code, in gcc 2.96 compared to
   2.95. Find out why that is, and propose corrections. The decreased
   code quality was observed primarily for C++, so you'd need to work
   on the C++ front-end here.

2. C99. There is a list at gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html telling what
   features are still missing. Pick one that sounds easy, and
   implement it.

3. Bug fixing. There are three sources for bugs; I'm not sure which
   one you were referring to:
   a) the expected failures in the test suite. In the g++.old-deja
      collection, look for files containing XFAIL
   b) the ever-growing GNATS list of problem reports. If you need to
      change the status of one of these (e.g. because you've found that
      one of the open reports does not report a bug), please let me know.
   c) the bug list on the bug reporting page. These are probably all 
      difficult to fix, that's why we put them there.

Regards,
Martin