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.

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