From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Edelsohn To: Geoff Keating Cc: Joe Buck , Andreas Jaeger , "H . J . Lu" , gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Compiler for Red Hat Linux 8 Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:28:00 -0000 Message-id: <200107182128.RAA29256@makai.watson.ibm.com> References: <20010718133057.B16537@lucon.org> X-SW-Source: 2001-07/msg01304.html >>>>> "H J Lu" writes: HJ> The same thing can happen with 3.0.2 ... That means the current HJ> unmodified *released* gcc may not be usable for Linux. That will HJ> last at least from one bug fix release to the next one. If it happens HJ> more than half a year within a year, people may say you shouldn't use HJ> the unmodified *released* gcc on Linux. Various distributions and user communities frequently use patched versions of GCC, but that does not mean that the variants need to be incompatible or start from a non-FSF source base. The two questions are: 1) What GCC sources should be used as the base for the patched version? 2) Should the patched version maintain binary compatibility with the base? I personally strongly encourage Red Hat to consider using the FSF GCC release as the base. This is not a question of either using the vanilla FSF GCC release or using a completely separate branch. There are other options besides those two extreme positions. I also personally encourage Red Hat to maintain compatibility with the FSF GCC releases. Red Hat employs a large number of highly skilled GCC developers. If GCC 3.0 or the GCC trunk is not stable enough / correct enough to use in a GNU/Linux distribution, Red Hat's developers can work to improve and stabilize a particular FSF GCC source base as effectively as any other GCC source base. Red Hat's GNUPro "devo" source base is synchronized with the FSF sources and, therefore, contains roughly as many problems as the FSF sources. A Red Hat 8 branch in GNUPro would need a similar amount of stabilization work and performance improvement as the FSF sources. Maybe Red Hat could request a branch in the FSF GCC repository to which they could have exclusive write access for their own development effort -- using their own patches and acceptance criteria? Maybe the generic "GNU/Linux GCC" branch for all distributors, which another person proposed, is the solution. I would like to find a way for Red Hat to develop their Red Hat Linux 8 GCC release from the FSF GCC sources. I think that we can find a solution more easily by starting with a discussion of Red Hat's requirements and how to fit those into the FSF GCC development environment instead of starting from the pre-defined, limited proposals which have been mentioned so far. Thanks, David P.S. Speaking for myself; representing neither IBM nor the GCC Steering Committee. =============================================================================== David Edelsohn T.J. Watson Research Center dje@watson.ibm.com P.O. Box 218 +1 914 945 4364 (TL 862) Yorktown Heights, NY 10598