Re: Incorporation of Objective-C 2.0 changes into GCC trunk

[Chris Lattner <clattner@apple.com>]

On Jul 22, 2009, at 2:58 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 07/22/2009 10:57 AM, Richard Guenther wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Paolo Bonzini<bonzini@gnu.org>   
>> wrote:
>>> Gregory Casamento wrote:
>>>> As far as I'm aware apple has an assignment for changes to gcc,  
>>>> so it
>>>> should be possible to pull them in.
>>> You're not forced to assign changes that you do not want to assign.
>>
>> I don't understand.  Yes you are forced to assign copyright to the  
>> FSF
>> for changes you contribute to FSF GCC.  You are of course not forced
>> to do this for your own forks of GCC.
>
> Yeah, if Apple didn't send the code to FSF GCC, the fact that Apple  
> has an assignment does not count.  They're not forced to assign  
> changes that they do not want to assign -- as long as they keep the  
> changes local, which they did for Objective C 2.0.  The only way to  
> know, would be to ask someone at Apple.

If someone is seriously interested in merging pieces of the Apple GCC  
tree into the main FSF tree, and if there is a process in place to  
make the assignment happy, I would be happy to try to make it happen.

The major caveats are that the Apple GCC tree isn't in great shape (it  
will take some work to make the objc2 changes "submission quality"  
because they may break the gnu runtime, be overly darwin specific,  
etc), Apple engineers will not be able to help with this work, and it  
may take some time to get the approval to assign copyright of the code.

What is the process for getting a blob of code assigned to the FSF  
that is not just being committed into the tree?

-Chris