Am Dienstag, dem 21.10.2025 um 18:58 -0400 schrieb David Malcolm via Gcc: > On Tue, 2025-10-21 at 22:32 +0200, Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc wrote: ...
> > For (b), messaging, for example, I see news sites picking up on your > patch postings and there's been discussion in related forums that could > be paraphrased about whether the gcc devs don't have better things to > do with their time. I wonder if we need to explicitly state that this > is intended as a fun retrocomputing side-project that serves the > greater good of ensuring that GCC can support many kinds of programming > language, and to make it clear that what we're spending the bulk of our > cycles on as upstream developers for GCC 16 are things like C++ > improvements (reflection support, better template errors), better code > generation in general, and on specific targets, better support for the > Linux kernel, etc. If there is enough interest to write and polish a FE, then, IMHO, this should already be justification enough to include it (assuming there are no other serious concerns about technical aspects or others concerns why this adds specific problems). If the GCC community is so weak that we can not accept such a gift without worrying maintenance burden, is has much more serious problems. If it can, but GCC judges the value of such contributions only based on some narrow idea of economic interests or utility for some parts of the industry, then it is on the way towards irrelevancy as a free software project. So in terms of messaging, I think this is the point we should make: The GCC community is strong enough to support it even though it may not be the most important thing for the industry, and as a free software project is also allows the community to contribute meaningfully based on its interests, and these contributions are not simply rejected because some part of the industry may not see it as important for the future. My 2 cents. Martin > > I hope this is constructive criticism; I'm sorry if it comes across as > dunking on your project, and again, this is just my personal opinion. > > Dave > > > > > > > Stage 1 of GCC 16 is almost over, so hereby we are asking the SC to > > please consider accepting the contribution of the front-end in its > > current form, which hopefully this time will be considered mature > > enough > > as to not be a burden once integrated. > > > > There is still a lot of work to do and it is not our intention to nag > > the committee nor the community with this; we could certainly stay > > off-tree for more cycles, and we will do it if we have to, but we > > really > > are eager to be in-tree as it would make implementing modules and > > other > > advanced features, that are next in our TODO now that the support for > > the core language has been completed, so much easier. > > > > I of course offer my personal commitment to maintain the front-end > > responsibly and timely, to the best of my limited abilities and even > > more limited availability. > > > > Thank you for considering! > > > > [1] Front-end homepage: > > https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Algol68FrontEnd > > > > [2] Version 4 of the patch series in gcc-patches: > > > > https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2025-October/698011.html > >
