Joe Buck wrote:
On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 02:27:27PM -0800, Tim Prince wrote:
Joel Sherrill wrote:
Tobias Burnus wrote:
According to the GCC 4.4 Release Criteria,
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/criteria.html, only C and C++ are primary
languages. And thus only C and C++ regressions can be release critical.
I propose to add Fortran to these languages. Reasons:
- Fortran is relatively widely used; while C/C++ is wider used,
distributions and to a lesser users compile also libraries such as BLAS,
LAPACK etc. which are written in Fortran
- gfortran has few (known;-) regressions. Currently, PR33296 and
PR32841.
My first thought is does gfortran support and have
similarly good test results on all primary and secondary
platforms.
How would anyone judge this, except by referring to gcc-testresults?
gfortran developers have cleared up a number of secondary platform
problems whose counterparts have been allowed to remain in the "primary"
language. In my experience, this supports the "actively maintained" point.
Maybe there could be a "semi-primary" or "experimental primary" status;
a feature could be treated as primary, but with the understanding that
the requirement will be waived if it causes excessive delay. The
"experimental" label could be dropped after a few successful releases.
What is the real purpose of being a primary language?
In practice, the release managers seem to give quite a bit of weight to
regressions in non-primary languages. As long as the Fortran
maintainers continue their good work, we will have excellent Fortran
support on many of GCC's targets. The only benefit I can really see is
that it makes good PR (Public Relations).
gcj and libgcj, in my opinion, are in similarly good shape. Should java
be made a primary language as well? Many of the same arguments would apply.
Also there are several 'Primary Platforms' that are bare-metal elf
targets. How well does gfortran run on those?
I am not against changing gfortran's status, I am just trying to
understand what the real benefits would be.
David Daney
