On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Michael Cieslinski wrote: > I also could convert parts of the ggcinternals manual into wiki pages. > But only if there is a consensus about this being the way to go.
I'm sure it's the wrong way to go. I find a properly formatted and indexed book far more convenient for learning about substantial areas of compiler internals, or for finding what some particular macro is specified to do, than a wiki. And since some people seem to think the internal manual is of no use: it's the first place I refer to for information on the areas of internals it covers; after that source code and mailing list archives, the wiki very rarely. I think the wiki is certainly useful for rough notes such as <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/general%20backend%20cleanup>, synthesised from mailing list discussions. It may be useful as an intermediate step in putting together reverse-engineered information about internals in order to specify it properly in the internals manual - but only provided authorship and copyright assignment information is rigorously tracked as required by the FSF. But in general internals documentation should include the *specification* written before the implementation and submitted with it for review together, and the specification should not need to be reverse-engineered later (see Kenner's comments passim about the importance of comments being written at the time of code or at least by its author, not backfilled later). -- Joseph S. Myers http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/gcc/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal mail) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (CodeSourcery mail) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bugzilla assignments and CCs)
