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  • From: "Ryan Abrams" <rabrams AT sourcemage.org>
  • To: "Andrew" <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>, "Source Mage Grimoire" <sm-grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells
  • Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 12:50:14 -0500

Holy crap. Calm down.

No one said anything about throwing away 25% of the grimoire. Obviously that
is absurd.

What I have asked (and what was decided when we first switched to gcc3) is
that spells be reevaluated, patched, whatever to remove the need for gcc2 as
a requirement. I would also like to remove the USEGCC2 hack, because it is
just that.. a conversion hack, that shouldnt be kept around longer than
neccessary. Now if there is a spell that requires GCC2 and cannot be
patched, then we need to evaluate the usefulness of that spell... i would
suggest that unless it is crucial, we move it to a z-gcc2 section. This does
not take away the user's ability to have the spell, but it does give it a
"stigma" to some, and indicates that it needs to be fixed.

If that leads to 25% of the grimoire being in a z-gcc2 section, then
obviously we shoudlnt do it, and instead have to live with USEGCC2. But that
doesnt mean we shouldnt try to remove that requirement first, before just
tossing up our hands and giving up. Things like saing we dont have enough
"clout" to keep our grimoire clean (unlike redhat or debian) are absurd -
Clout has nothing to do with it. Quite honestly, sacrificing technical merit
for user growth is not really a smart move. And that isn't what we are going
to do.

To address the latency issue, we have had a LOT of latency. Since the gcc 3
switch we have built in a system to handle both, to provide latency, with
the explicit understanding that the goal is to later remove that system.

I am not suggesting that we simply drop all support for gcc2 entirely. That
is stupid and unneccessary. gcc2 will be castable, etc.

What I am saying is exactly what I've been saying all along. In 1.0 (and its
RCs), GCC2 will not be part of the default install, and I would like it to
be removed from as much of our grimoire as possible.

-Ryan

p.s. - does "facist" invoke Godwin's law, or has a loophole been found?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew" <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
To: "Source Mage Grimoire" <sm-grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells


> I agree totally, more to the point, the main argument i heard was to the
> effect of "we shouldnt support these spells because the author needs
> to use a 'modern' compiler" now that sounds fine, except for the part
> where we dont have _that_ many users that we can take a stance like
> that. Sure if we were as big as redhat or debian we might be able to
> get away with that, but just tossing 25% of our spells is only going
> to hurt our popularity, not to mention the number of spells we have,
> which, oh yea isnt spectacular. Theres plenty of perfectly good software
> out there that for some reason wont work with the new gcc, but thats
> not a reason so simply not support it.
>
> The word thats coming to mind here is facsism...sorry but when i read
> the thread on this thats what i thought. Dont get me wrong, I think that
> we should get everything over to gcc3 that we can, but simply removing
> our support for things we cant get over is just plain facsist. We, as
> well as the hacker community as a whole enjoys freedom, and I want to
> be free to use non-gcc3 compliant software, if i have to wait an hour
> for an older compiler, then fine, i'll do it.
>
> Now i know we want to be a gcc3 only distribution, but simply wishing
> it so by dropping spells isnt the way to do it, theres going to be some
> latency involved. again gcc2 is totally optional, so its not hurting us to
> keep those spells around. To put this in perspective its like removing all
> the spells that play mp3s because mp3 doesnt fit our licensing scheme,
> and unless theres a way we can make that piece of software work with
> ogg files, its out. Well not exactly, but equally absurd if you ask me.
>
> Andrew
>
> On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 04:55:18PM +0200, Julian v. Bock wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > IIRC we agreed to make gcc2 optional. Removing it completely (as
> > suggested by the bug reports I got for my sections) does not sound
> > like a good idea. Why should people not be able to use ddd? (I am
> > definately not going to port it to the new libstdc++ ;)
> >
> > If gcc2 is completely optional it does not hurt anyone.
> >
> > Julian
> > _______________________________________________
> > SM-Grimoire mailing list
> > SM-Grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/sm-grimoire
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