On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 11:14:22AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 03:31 +0200, Steven Bosscher wrote: > > On Tuesday 17 May 2005 03:16, Joe Buck wrote: > > > On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 03:11:03AM +0200, Steven Bosscher wrote: > > > > On Tuesday 17 May 2005 02:59, Steven Bosscher wrote: > > > > > Oh, and how helpful of you to post that patch to gcc-patches@ too... > > > > > NOT! > > > > > > > > Ah, I see you did post it to gcc-patches@, but not to fortran@, which > > > > is a requirement for gfortran patches -- and the reason why nobody > > > > has noticed the patch. > > > > > > > > http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2005-04/msg02287.html > > > > > > > > The patch is OK too. > > > > > > Steven, please try to be politer to someone who is trying to help. > > > > How is it helpful to not follow the rules when posting patches > Quite simple: > > * I wasn't aware about this fortran specific patch posting policy. I > never have sent any gcc patch to any other list but gcc-patches for > approval before, so I also had not done so this time.
There is a mention of this policy somewhere on the GCC web, but it's in the cellar, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, with a sign that says "beware of the leopard". Or, rather, it's not mentioned on the bugs page, but on the mailing list description page, which is not a place where it would occur to most people to look. Given this, we shouldn't be surprised if people make mistakes. > > > This kind of tone will only discourage contributors. > > > > My tone was no different than Ralf's toward me. I can understand why Steven feels singled out; I jumped on him because I really, really don't want people to be discouraged from submitting patches, so that's why I objected publicly (rather than privately). > Well, I admit I had been sarcastic/fatalistic in replying to Steven, > primarily, because I am pretty much frustrated about GCC's mainstream > developer's position/attitude on embedded targets. To be fair, Ralf, I should ask you to be more polite as well, but you have a perfect right to complain. I used to be an embedded programmer myself, and while I cared very much about the size and speed of the embedded code I wound up with, I didn't care at all about being able to run the compiler itself on a machine that wasn't reasonably up to date, much less trying to bootstrap the compiler on an embedded target. Is that really what we should be aiming for? As opposed to just making -Os work really well? If I could get better embedded code by having the compiler use a lot of memory, but I could easily afford a machine with that amount of memory, I would have had no complaint. It's true that there are many GCC developers who don't care much about embedded systems, but there are others that care a lot. But many GCC developers lack the relevant expertise, It therefore seems that we have two *separate* problems: one is that increased resource consumption makes gcc harder to use as a hosted compiler on older systems, and the other is that embedded target support isn't getting the attention it needs (if it weren't for the heroic efforts of Dan Kegel, it would be far worse). We shouldn't mix these two together; it seems sometimes they get mixed solely because too many free software projects don't support cross-compilation properly, but that is a bug in those projects.
