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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:41:47 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>
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Subject: Re: Building GCC 4.3.0 on Cygwin...
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On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 08:23:46AM -0700, Brian Dessent wrote:
>Charles Wilson wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry, but the concerns expressed in the messages above are rank
>> paranoia.  *Microsoft* has nothing to do with the lack of operable
>> modern gcc's on windows, and there is no conspiracy to break gcc on cygwin.
>
>Yes, that's pure FUD.
>
>> But having an active maintainer is one thing.  The actual codebase of
>> gcc is another:  Back in the days of yore, cygming gcc actually existed
>> on its own branch. It had a lot of tweaks relative to mainline.  When
>> mainline 4.0 came out, it was massively different than mainline 3.4 and
>> had very few of those cygming-specific tweaks: in fact, it didn't work
>> very well at all on cygwin/mingw, especially the additional frontends.
>> Porting all the cygming tweaks to the new 4.0 mainline was going to be
>> very hard, and that all happened right when we (cygwin) had no
>> maintainer to manage/push the effort!
>
>Maintaining gcc packages seems to be a job that people take after some
>prodding. Just the other day Danny Smith said he only started doing it
>for MinGW because Mumit Khan (hope I spelled his name right) stopped.

And that's exactly why I volunteered.  Mumit went away (ignoring my
emails for clarification) and DJ Delorie specifically stepped down.

There is no conspiracy.  What is needed is for there to be a vocal
advocate on the gcc list for Windows patches.  I can only approve a very
limited amount of stuff so we need gcc global maintainers to approve the
majority of Windows fixes.

It is very laughable to think that Microsoft is putting some kind of
pressure on gcc developers.  The reason for problems is that if you
don't bug people about patches the patches don't go in.  It's that
simple.  Since my day job has been increasingly more time consuming for
the last few years, I have had less time to do the bugging (not that I
was ever very good at it).

So, rather then expending effort theorizing dark reasons behind Windows
bit rot, it would pay people to just be proactive about advocating for
patches to be applied.  That's how free software works.

cgf

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