On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 10:56:55AM -0400, David Edelsohn wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Jack Howarth <howa...@bromo.med.uc.edu>
> wrote:
> > Steven,
> > One other comment. I've felt for awhile that a major
> > strength of FSF gcc was the fact that its support for
> > so many targets insured that latent bugs tended to be
> > found in the compiler. Likewise graphite has recently
> > exposed certain latent bugs as well. Why should we not
> > expect the same to be true for the front-end if an
> > alternative middle/end is used via dragon-egg? It may
> > well tickle unique flaws in the front-end.
>
> Jack,
>
> The Graphite project and the various GCC targets participate in GCC
> development. Helping fix GCC bugs affecting those features, supports
> and grows the GCC developer base. There needs to be some mutualistic
> relationship. I don't see members of the LLVM community arguing that
> they should contribute to GCC to improve performance comparisons.
>
> As Steven mentioned, LLVM has been extremely effective at utilizing
> FSF technology while its community complains about the FSF, GCC, GCC's
> leadership and GCC's developer community. If GCC is so helpful and
> useful and effective, then work on it as well and give it credit; if
> GCC is so bad, then why rely on it? The rhetoric is disconnected from
> the actions.
>
> David
David,
While this may all be true, dragon-egg does represent an opportunity
for the two communities to engage each other in a cooperative endeaver
rather than retreating into competing camps. I still believe, for the
secondary language front-ends in FSF gcc, forcing their development
communities to eventually fork into the same competing camps (rather
than pool efforts in the same front-end) will not be in the best
interests of either group.
Jack
