From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Richard Henderson To: Joe Buck Cc: Bernd Schmidt , David Edelsohn , gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org, gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Loop unroll fixes Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:11:00 -0000 Message-id: <20010917151142.A30386@redhat.com> References: <20010917131522.B30256@redhat.com> <200109172124.OAA11113@atrus.synopsys.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-09/msg00668.html On Mon, Sep 17, 2001 at 02:24:32PM -0700, Joe Buck wrote: > So how about requiring such documentation as part of the patch? Fine by me. > but at least some explanation of what is going wrong, what the patch does, > and why this is the right thing would make patch reviewers' lives easier > and probably improve the quality of gcc. In addition, it aids debugging future problems as well. Suppose the patch is wrong in some way that causes it to fail for some obscure target under some conditions. Suppose this is not discovered for a year. If the patch is well documented, one can quickly recall what the original problem was, as opposed to either (1) spending lots of time re-examining the original bug, or (2) guessing the that the old patch was wrong and reverting it. Both (1) and (2) have happened many times in gcc history. r~