I'm a relative newcomer to GCC [1], so I thought it would be a good idea to try to capture some of the "gotchas" and similar information on hacking on GCC in the form of a short guide for new contributors, whilst the experience of learning it is still fresh in my mind.
The guide can be read here: https://dmalcolm.fedorapeople.org/gcc/newbies-guide/index.html I've mostly tried to cover specific things I ran into that caused me difficulty, so it may be eclectic. (All opinions are my own) I hope that this is useful. Dave [1] did we miss GCC's 30th anniversary? https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History says the first release was 1987-03 -22. As for myself, Thursday appears to be the 6th anniversary of me starting the gcc-python-plugin and hence on poking at GCC's internals - I'm not sure if 6 years means I still count as a newcomer, but 30 years is geological epochs in software terms :)
