From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4048 invoked by alias); 30 Aug 2004 18:08:18 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 4023 invoked from network); 30 Aug 2004 18:08:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lon-mail-4.gradwell.net) (193.111.201.130) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 30 Aug 2004 18:08:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 37350 invoked from network); 30 Aug 2004 18:08:09 -0000 Received: from digraph.polyomino.org.uk (postmaster%pop3.polyomino.org.uk@81.187.227.50) by lon-mail-4.gradwell.net with SMTP; 30 Aug 2004 18:08:09 -0000 Received: from jsm28 (helo=localhost) by digraph.polyomino.org.uk with local-esmtp (Exim 4.41) id 1C1qZd-0003uB-LZ; Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:08:09 +0000 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:42:00 -0000 From: "Joseph S. Myers" X-X-Sender: jsm28@digraph.polyomino.org.uk To: Gabriel Dos Reis cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Release numbering In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <10408300112.AA22774@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <20040830012928.GA2387@disaster.jaj.com> <20040830081555.GA8738@disaster.jaj.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-SW-Source: 2004-08/txt/msg01507.txt.bz2 On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > Or 6.0. Or whatever. We never sworn carret diagnostics for 4.0. > Not just because we can't implement carret diagnostics now means we > should not reject the "huge perturbation" in the next release. We can also implement them incrementally under -Wcaret (say) and improve the precision of the location information passed to diagnostic functions, message by message, to make them more useful. (After adding testsuite support for testing the precise character at which a diagnostic is given.) No need to avoid implementing something because of version numbers if the usual principles of incremental development and avoiding big incompatible changes are followed. Changing the default, if desired, would be an incompatible change, but one only needing -Wno-caret added to tools parsing output, and there would probably have been a few releases in which the -Wno-caret option existed but was the default, serving as due warning to tool maintainers, before any such change. I believe in incremental improvement and avoiding big incompatible changes. I don't care about whether the version number is 3.5 or 4.0 or 5 or 2005 or any other variation someone wants to invent, as long as the version numbers stay monotonic increasing. -- Joseph S. Myers http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/gcc/ http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/gcc/#c90status - status of C90 for GCC 3.5 jsm@polyomino.org.uk (personal mail) jsm28@gcc.gnu.org (Bugzilla assignments and CCs)