From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 20478 invoked by alias); 18 Jul 2018 12:06:29 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 20467 invoked by uid 89); 18 Jul 2018 12:06:28 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KAM_LAZY_DOMAIN_SECURITY autolearn=no version=3.3.2 spammy=Engineering, Civil, donate, H*i:sk:P2Jb05y X-HELO: snark.thyrsus.com Received: from thyrsus.com (HELO snark.thyrsus.com) (71.162.243.5) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:06:26 +0000 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 80F933A4AA7; Wed, 18 Jul 2018 08:06:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:06:00 -0000 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Jonathan Wakely Cc: David Malcolm , Richard Guenther , Martin =?utf-8?B?TGnFoWth?= , "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" Subject: Re: [RFC] Adding Python as a possible language and it's usage Message-ID: <20180718120625.GA19628@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com References: <1531911391.18413.114.camel@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.9.4 (2018-02-28) X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2018-07/txt/msg00255.txt.bz2 Jonathan Wakely : > On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 at 11:56, David Malcolm wrote: > > Python 2.6 onwards is broadly compatible with Python 3.*. and is about > > to be 10 years old. (IIRC it was the system python implementation in > > RHEL 6). > > It is indeed. Without some regular testing with Python 2.6 it could be > easy to introduce code that doesn't actually work on that old version. > I did that recently, see PR 86112. > > This isn't an objection to using Python (I like it, and anyway I don't > touch the parts of GCC that you're talking about using it for). Just a > caution that trying to restrict yourself to a portable subset isn't > always easy for casual users of a language (also a problem with C++98 > vs C++11 vs C++14 as I'm sure many GCC devs are aware). It's not very difficult to write "polyglot" Python that is indifferent to which version it runs under. I had to solve this problem for reposurgeon; techniques documented here... http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/practical-python-porting/ -- Eric S. Raymond My work is funded by the Internet Civil Engineering Institute: https://icei.org Please visit their site and donate: the civilization you save might be your own.