Re: what DOES the GPL really say?

[Ronald Cole <ronald@devo.ridgecrest.ca.us>]

kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes:
> I think you seriously misunderstand the purpose of the EGCS project,
> which is to provide a framework within which highly experimental (and
> known to be broken) patches to GCC can be developed and perfected.
> Those patches are then fed into the normal GCC development process for
> further testing and then become parts of GCC releases.

I thought the main thrust was to get a g++ out to the public that had
working templates...  Even so, the egcs faq says that the egcs project
will "result in a more useful compiler, a more stable compiler, a
central compiler that works for more people, a compiler that generates
better code."  Better than what?  The FSF gcc?  I will definately use
the better product, which ever that one happens to be at the time.

> Nobody would want to build a public release of anything based on
> software that, by its very design, has serious problems.  That's not
> the purpose of this work.

Have you actually read the egcs home pages, Richard?  Again I quote from
the egcs faq:

   A compiler is a complicated piece of software, there will still be
   strong central maintainers who will reject patches, who will demand
   documentation of implementations, and who will keep the level of
   quality as high as it is today. Code that could use wider testing
   may be intergrated--code that is simply ill-conceived won't be.

So, perhaps it is you who "seriously misunderstands" the purpose of
the egcs project...

> As of the last (or next, I'm not sure of the precise schedule here)
> g77 release, the g77 patch set includes all of the GNAT patches.
> There is some question about whether the g77 patch set contains
> patches that will break GNAT, but none of these patches are actually
> required to build a correctly-functioning g77; they are to add
> optimizations that are deemed important for Fortran users.  Some of
> these optimizations are currently also being experimented with in the
> EGCS project.
> 
> As far as we know, GCC 2.7.2 plus the patches supplied by GNAT, will
> build a functioning g77, g++, and GNAT, with one exception, which relates
> to a change in the front-end interface and is what either just has or
> soon wil be addressed in the g77 release.

It will be nice to have all the public releases sync back up again...

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