From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Marc Espie <espie@quatramaran.ens.fr>
To: shebs@apple.com
Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: GCC's statement expression extension
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 16:20:00 -0000
Message-id: <200007292319.BAA31409@quatramaran.ens.fr>
References: <10007280137.AA18028@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <20000727183800T.mitchell@codesourcery.com> <3981DA38.DDEBF61C@apple.com> <20000728122755S.mitchell@codesourcery.com> <3981F647.2FBFFD19@apple.com>
X-SW-Source: 2000-07/msg00984.html

In article < 3981F647.2FBFFD19@apple.com > you write:
>Also, since they can only use Apple's modified version of
>GCC, their complaints and problems come to us in the tools group, not to
>bug-gcc.  So you probably haven't heard much of what they have to say.

Ouch.
This is a very bad way to do things. This means the Apple tools group hoard
some knowledge that may come very handy at times. 

There are fairly good reasons to do things that way (like, not burdening
the main gcc development process with specific, Apple-related issues).

When I handle gcc for OpenBSD, I do things that way, at least partially.
But I try very hard NOT to handle platform-independent issues at the 
OpenBSD level... when there are bugs I can fix, I send patches. When
there are bugs I can't fix, I ask here... and I send people to complain
here if they run into problems that seem representative of our user base
to me (or I try to give a reasonable image of what's going for us).

One major problem gcc had in the past is lack of feedback, lack of direction:
compiler growing and growing, with no real idea about what the userbase wanted.
Apart from the FSF mandate, there are issues... specifically, gcc will be
a failure if nobody uses it because of a (perceived or real) lack of 
robustness, or speed problems.

If you have specific instances of lots of users using some extensions over
in the Apple's tool group, please step forward and give them to us...