On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 4:52 AM, NightStrike <nightstr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > One thing you might want to consider is that with the typical X.Y.Z > versioning of most GNU projects, changing X allows breaking > compatibility in a significant way with previous versions. While Z > fixes regressions and Y adds new features, X is a place to make > infrequent but paradigm shifting changes that are unconstrained by a > desire to stay backwards compatible with older values of X. > > By going to what is essentially a Y.Z.0 release mechanism, you lose > that ability to some degree. Maybe that's ok in a mature project like > GCC.
I believe the GCC project has become too large to be able to usefully speak about breaking compatibility with previous versions. There are too many different moving parts. We break compatibility in various minor ways with every release. We try pretty hard to never break compatibility in a big way. Historically, as far as I can recall, the GCC major release number has never indicated a compatibility break that was relevant to most users. Ian
