On 05/31/2010 06:22 PM, Diego Novillo wrote:
Now that the SC and the FSF have agreed to this, we should decide
whether we switch and how. So, I would like comments on the following
questions:
Hmmmm, when I voted "yes" on the question "Requiring C++ Compiler for
GCC Builds" (that was the subject of the mail to the Steering Committee
mailing list to discuss this), I had the following in mind:
1- Should we switch to C++?
Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have taken the time to ponder this. In fact,
if not for the hordes of people that are only too eager to use every
nook and cranny of the C++ language, I would have been much more
supportive, as the situation we're finding ourselves in today is as if
we were to write a Fortran 2003 compiler using only features from
Fortran 77 plus (DE)ALLOCATE.
This simply isn't leading us into a maintainable future.
2- What is the cost in terms of build time?
Vladimir Makarov already addressed this.
3- What coding guidelines should we use?
We might need some time to find the right coding standards for *our* use.
What I wrote in my e-mail to the SC mailing list to support my stance
was the following:
"The useful part is to be able to use stl data structures and functions
to do the hard work in the compiler instead of using specially-written
tree-, list-, bitmap-, queue- and stack-creators, destroyers and walkers."
because I think that would be *immediately* useful, as in ...
4- Should we make the switch during the 4.6 stage 1?
... version 4.6.
Of course I agree with Richard Guenther that - *if done well and
completely* - turning the tree data type into a class is desirable.
However, that might simply be too much for the approximately 6 months
remaining of 4.6's stage 1.
Cheers,
--
Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.5/changes.html#Fortran
