Hi. The cxx-conversion idea does not come without its cons. The most important for us is that there will not be a plain gcc-core package that is smaller, builds faster a plain C compiler with a smaller binary and is able to bootstrap future versions of a plain C compiler made of the latest vesion of gcc. The con is recursive.
The pros are two as far as i can see: 1) The C++ frontend will be put to the test in the bootstrap proccess. This one indeed has some value. 2) The gcc codebase can become cleaner and/or faster. This one is arguable and it would take some real numbers to prove the extra bootstrap time is worth it. Please note that i'm speaking as someone who is developing software that is strictly C (and many projects are like that, including python, perl, ffmpeg, linux-kernel, etc, etc) and i'm interested to get the latest gcc-core snapshot occassionaly to test both gcc and my software. And the explosion of the tarball size and bootstrap time lately is very discouraging. Given the fact that especially in the embedded world it's possible to have a perfectly working system based exclusively on C and a dynamic language, i think there should be a choice to be able to avoid the dependency of the C++ component in the compiler for those who want that. The ability to have this choice is a feature of gcc... Thanks, Nik
