Re: Don't shoot the messenger

On Thu, 23 Jan 2014, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Really, attempts to shoot the messenger *won't help*.  By ignoring the
> areas where clang *does* have a clear advantage, *right now*, you are
> displaying the exact head-in-the-sand attitude that is most likely to
> concede the high ground to clang.

You appear to think things are being ignored, based on a notion of FSF 
policy that is several years out of date (if it was ever accurate).

Contributions of patches to improve GCC in areas where clang has an 
advantage, such as modularity and usability as a library in editors, 
refactoring tools, static analyzers etc., are welcome and have been 
welcome for several years, at least since plugin support was added (of 
course, such tools using parts of GCC would need to be released as free 
software under GPLv3+).  See the proposed improvement projects at 
<http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/ImprovementProjects>, and the architectural goals 
linked therefrom, for something more accurate regarding GCC developers' 
notions of current deficiencies and desired directions for GCC than an old 
notion of FSF policy.  Poorly defined interfaces, lack of modularity and 
presence of global state do not reflect some sort of policy decision; they 
reflect the history of a code base that is about twice as old as LLVM.  
Global cleanups in all these areas have been going in at least since the 
start of EGCS, and remain welcome.

Actual FSF policy is as documented at 
<http://gcc.gnu.org/gccmission.html>.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com