Re: Designs for better debug info in GCC

[Kai Henningsen <kai@desktop.khms.westfalen.de>]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 02:38:31AM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

> Would reformatting these and stamping a title on top make it worthy of
> your interest?

Actually, I think that *would* help (though, of course, it's impossible
to predict if it would help *enough*).

I've noticed before (though this thread is a particularly extreme
example) that GCC developers seem no more immune than other people, from
being able to ignore what's in a mail message (or news article) they're
replying to, even up to ignoring the carefully-selected part they're
quoting.

I don't claim to understand it (nor to be completely immune to it
myself), but I'm no longer surprised by it. Disappointed, but not
surprised.

Anyway, the point is that this seems much rarer when the subject is
*not* in the inbox or a newsgroup. For whatever reason, people apply
their reading skills differently in different situations.

So, my advice would be:

1. Wait a while, so people have time to calm down.

2. Reformat and reorganize the stuff.

3. Put it in an obviously different format - say, give a link to a PDF,
instead of putting it in a mail to this list.

Oh, and it probably wouldn't hurt to give a short summary of what you
did to the various optimizers, including mentioning "no change", *after*
you know that that actually works. (For a work in progress, people seem
to often disbelieve such claims, however well justified ... at least, if
they're already looking hard for arguments against it, however
spurious.)

And no, I have no idea why this particular discussion degenerated so
badly, and similar others didn't. Your style of argumentation may not
have been perfect, but the same can be said for many other people here,
and it doesn't always seem to lead to a meltdown. Maybe it depends on
unpredictable factors like the mood people are in when they go reading
their mail.