On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Richard Guenther <richard.guent...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Bernd Schmidt <ber...@codesourcery.com> > wrote: >> On 04/11/2012 09:45 AM, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: >>> I have been having difficulty following the twists and the turns and >>> the goal post moving. >>> Are you essentially requiring to see GCC rewritten in C++ before we >>> switch to C++? >> >> Frankly, despite all this discussion, we still don't really know what >> the people who insist on a C++ conversion actually want to do. We've >> seen trivial suggestions like rewriting vec.[ch], which isn't really >> going to make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but >> everything else has remained vague. At the GCC gathering last year we >> saw a presentation which made me feel like language features had just >> gone in search of possible applications, which doesn't fill me with a >> lot of confidence either. >> >> So yes, I would like some significant part rewritten in the way the C++ >> folks would like to see it, so we can actually judge what we will get. >> And that's moving my personal goal post from "hell no" somewhere closer >> to what the C++ proponents would like. >> >> The incremental approach (tearing down the barrier of stage1 being >> compiled in C first and then getting things in piecewise) may seem like >> a path of less resistance, but we can't afford to have a thread like >> this for every change, and I wouldn't like to see us decide after 100 >> patches that the end result sucks and we have to either live with it or >> revert the lot. >> >> IMO, gimple might be worth trying to convert, since it's the newest code >> in gcc and presumably already half-way to what people consider a >> "modern" style (lots of annoying little functions that get in the way >> while debugging). >> >> But I suspect that when such a branch has been done, it will still come >> down to personal preference as to which variant is best. This is why I >> still think the whole thing is deeply misguided, as it's not about >> objective technical issues, but merely about language preferences, and >> everyone has a different one. You can't match everyone's taste in a big >> project, and thus real developers have to adapt to a project, not the >> other way round. Discussions like this are a toxic distraction from real >> work. >> >> IMO it would be best if we could find a majority of global reviewers to >> speak out and say once and for all "no, this just isn't happening", so >> we can drop all this nonsense and get back to improving the compiler for >> users. The second best thing would be to have a branch with actual work >> done for us to consider. > > Frankly I'd say the second best thing is the first best thing. Show us the > code! Then we decide. It does not work the other way around. >
That may not be always the best strategy to move forward. Some level of discussions and agreement can be reached I think. thanks, David > Richard.
