Hi,
On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:07:52AM -0500, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Martin Jambor <mjam...@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> > As far as newbies are concerned, I think that grasping that .c files
> > are C++ files is one of the easy things to learn about GCC compared to
> > other necessary knowledge (which is something we should work on).
>
> One more oddities compared to standard practice.
>
> > If the problem is that your emacs opens gcc files in C mode instead of
> > C++, add this to your .emacs file:
> >
> > (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("gcc/.+\\.[ch]\\'" . c++-mode))
>
> More oddities: we assume Emacs, and we want people to add those things.
> Are we sure we are worrying about newcomers, or just fighting to preserve
> the way things used to be 20 years?
I am quite sure. You removed part of my email where I said I would
not mind mass renaming at all if git history was still easily usable.
This is not because I am some sort of crazy conservative, it is
because I use the history very often and I believe I am not alone.
Moreover, after reading Andrew's email in which he outlined a mass
renaming as a part of re-architecting gcc, I believe that waiting for
that to happen and having it happen is the best course of action (even
regardless of inconveniences with git history because that is not
going to be renaming for the sake of renaming but a substantial
change, worth doing nevertheless, or at least I hope so).
In the meantime, people can reconfigure their editor as I do with
emacs.
I still think that mixing C++ .c files and .cc files is silly and more
confusing than what we have now. However, I can live with it.
As far as newcomers are concerned, I have joined GCC only about 6
years ago so I am still quite new and still remember my earliest days.
>From my experience, the real obstacles are the tough issues to
overcome (like when you have an ICE in expr.c and there is no way you
can understand what is even going on there, let alone why it ICEs),
certainly not a number of small oddities. If we really want to help
newcomers, we have to concentrate on the difficult stuff. The simple
things usually do not really matter.
Furthermore, if we do a svn rename here and there, _mechanically_ turn
a struct into a class or a macro into a template (you noted I stressed
the word mechanically, right?) or remove some other small oddity at
the expense of making life of core gcc developers more difficult, the
newcomers will not even notice and the overall outcome will be
negative. This is not trying to keep things as they were 20 years
ago, this is saying we should only make changes that make sense. And
personally, I hope I will not only welcome such changes, but also be
able to help with them.
Martin
