Times are changing [LWN.net]

Times are changing

Posted Jun 12, 2008 8:35 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Std C by madscientist
Parent article: Implications of pure and constant functions

At the time GCC's support was confusing and no company had the time and money to support a member at committee meetings.

The biggest problem at the time was RMS's position: GCC was supposed to be GNU C Compiler - and all other frontends were second-class citizens. Including C++. State-of-the-art GCC (the venerable 2.7.2.3) had awful C++ support and few developers used it as C++-compiler-of-choice. Eventually EGCS split happened, C++ support was improved to the point that now GCC is one of the C++ compilers - but all this happened after standard was finished. Today WG pays very serious attention to GCC: if some feature is flat-out rejected by GCC team it'll need A LOT OF supporters to be even considered. Thankfully GCC too pays close attention to what WG is doing so it's not a problem.

To WG difference between free compiler and proprietary one is NOT important. Difference between obscure and popular one is. As GCC's C++ compiler moved from obscurity to the compiler-of-choice it importance to WG moved similarly...

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Times are changing

Posted Jun 12, 2008 13:00 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

Since we're talking about the C standard here, not the C++ standard, I'm not sure I understand your concern about the capabilities of C++ in GCC back "in the day". Although, you are definitely correct in your assessments, IMO.

What difference would it make to the C99 WG, what RMS's position was on C vs. C++, or the state of C++ in GCC at the time? There's no question that GCC was, even then, one of the most widely used C compilers around. My reference to proprietary compilers was meant to say that WG members couldn't/shouldn't be expected to pay for proprietary compiler licenses so they could learn about them: it's quite reasonable to expect those companies to pony up some $$ to send someone to the WG. For free software, there's nothing stopping the existing members from examining the docs and even the implementations directly, and/or asking questions on the mailing list to get details. Engaging the community that way, rather than requiring WG attendance or else ignoring the compiler, would have worked better for all concerned.