Re: gcc development schedule [Re: sharing libcpp between GDB and GCC]

law
2002-03-27T17:00:02Z

In message <200203271517.HAA22671@kankakee.wrs.com>, mike stump writes:
> flow out of their, well, uhm, because they are god, rather, because we
> have seen them make the hard choices before, we have experience with
> how they make them, and we have in the past agreed with their manner
> and style.
Right. And in a similar manner, we support those developers who we see
consistently providing high quality designs, code, etc. When we see that
happening we give those developers more and more freedom and eventually
they turn into a Richard Henderson, Mark Mitchell, Jeff Law, etc.

> To overcome this obstacle, you will need to either come up with ideas
> that are obviously better to us that we agree with, or to put in
> enough face time for us to know how you make choices.
Right. Ultimately it comes down to building a certain amount of trust between
the new developer and the older developers. Building that trust usually
happens as the new developer submits quality analysis, designs and code.

It may seem odd, but there was a time when each and every one of the key
developers today had to go through the same process of building the trust
of the older developers. In some cases that process actually happened
nearly a decade before we even had a steering committee.

> Also, ideas are free... Or put another way, ideas are a dime a dozen.
> We can all come up with many ideas, the problem isn't one of coming up
> with ideas, it is finding the resources to implement them.
Amen! From my personal experience, that is really the kicker. And in
fact, changes over the last few years in my personal and professional
life have severely limited how much I can be involved in the day to day
development of GCC. I contribute when I can, but the torch has largely
been passed along to others.

One of my key goals when we started the EGCS project 5 years ago was to
build a self-sustaining project. It's been a joy to watch folks like
Mark, Richard, Bernd, Benjamin, Gerald, David, Alex, Jan and a host of
others pick up where I left off and continue to move the project forward
as I stepped away from the daily grind. I'm sure that some of the key
folks today will move on in the future, but hopefully we've put a system
in place by which new developers are continually brought into the fold.

> It has been that, it now that, and will always be that. If you increased
the
> value of your contributions to include the resources to implement
> them, and yes, you can implement any idea you want... If you want a
> SC committee that collects money from companies, you can always create
> one, using anybody you want, using any rules you want. Just do it.
> You don't need anybodies permission or acceptance.
Right. One of the core ideas when we started EGCS was that folks contribute
based on their abilities. For some that means they work on the internals
of GCC, others deal with web pages, other deal with political issues, others
deal with documentation, testsuites, etc etc.

If someone's skill is finding money and managing dispersal of that money to
foster development of key technologies, then, well, we'd welcome that. But
we're not necessarily going to re-focus the steering committee or the
developers to perform those tasks.

jeff