Daniel Berlin wrote: > Maybe you should start naming names, so we can take stock of the > problem.
Because of Acovea and my reviews of GCC (there are two more coming, one in a print magazine), a lot of people write me privately. This happens with commercial compilers as well... and combining those e-mails with conversations in IRC and other mailing lists, I have ample evidence that many people feel that the GCC developer community is not very welcoming. Why do people write me? I've been doing compiler reviews, and working on compilers (other than GCC), for more than 15 years. Perhaps people just think they know me, and are more comfortable talking to a "person" who has publicly expressed concerns similar to thiers. I am not the only voice in these threads, though. Several people have expressed feelings herein that are similar to mine. > How do you expect things to adapt and change if you won't give us > examples? We've made productive suggestions. People have cited specific examples. For example, 1) Bugmasters could be less perfunctory and pejorative in their comments. Examples have been given. 2) A mentoring system could help bring along new GCC developers. I'm not talking about hand-holding, I'm suggesting that having some place for people to ask a few questions, one on one, to get over certain conceptual humps. 3) To keep Steven's bloodpressure down, I suggest a new mailing list, gcc-design, where engineers like myself can propose designs and concepts without upsetting those who find such discussions annoying. As it is, I now have enough information to proceed with a couple of patches related to these dicussions. We'll see how it goes. ..Scott
