Re: GCC 3.1 Release

[Marc Espie <espie@quatramaran.ens.fr>]

In article <3CB823A0.136EF4E3@moene.indiv.nluug.nl> you write:
>Neil Booth wrote:

>> Mark Mitchell wrote:-

>> > I have a proposal before the SC to slip the GCC 3.2 schedule even
>> > further; so that the first phase of GCC 3.2 development will now end
>> > one month  beyond the release of GCC 3.1 -- June 1st -- pushing the
>> > GCC 3.2  release date back to October 1st so as to give people time to
>> > work on major changes for GCC 3.2 *after* GCC 3.1 is released.

>> IMO this is still too short; I think there should be two months after
>> the previous release for the first phase, giving us an 8-month cycle
>> instead of a 6-month one.

>The problem with Mark's "mental model" of the release process is that
>bug fixing doesn't screech to a grinding halt the moment 3.1 is out.

>Because then a whole group of "new" testers comes along and finds new
>bugs that we (and our "regular" testers) haven't found.  For 3.0 this
>effect was so bad that basically only the 3.0.4 release can be described
>as "generally useful".

>I do not have a good solution to that problem.

A large of the problem is the perceived quality of gcc releases.

If you can manage to deliver a rock-stable compiler or two, that works
on a reasonable set of architectures, you will suddenly see lots more
tests coming in.

Let's look at gcc 3.0. Who actually uses it ? None of the BSD has imported
it (judging from personal experience, I have seen enough `small issues' in
it that don't make it worth it from 2.95: doesn't fix code too much, doesn't
work way better on the architectures OpenBSD supports, and is slower).

Yes, it has better C++ support. But, between the KDE project who still
recommend gcc 2.95 on their web page, and our developers who in a large
majority don't care for C++, what do you think is going to happen.

I wish I had more time to spend to work on gcc, and to fix bugs.
But I am facing the same problem you are: I can't import the compiler
into OpenBSD until it's stable enough, and I can't get enough help to
get it stable because it's not in OpenBSD yet.

I like the move to shorter releases schedules, it means less time to
go off-track.

It's to be expected that the release slips at first. The only way
to correct that is probably to do less sexy work, and more working
compiler.

I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but if things don't improve,
a large subset of people are not going to want to update beyond gcc 2.95,
especially the guys who are not running on i386/linux.