sm-grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Discussion of Spells and Grimoire items
List archive
- From: Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
- To: Source Mage Grimoire <sm-grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells
- Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 15:04:25 -0700
> No one said anything about throwing away 25% of the grimoire. Obviously that
> is absurd.
well all ive been seeing is "fix or drop" messages, fix often isnt
something we have the time or energy for, thus leaving drop. the other
statement was made was something to the effect of not supporting software
that doesnt use a 'modern' compiler. sure we shouldnt go for a broken
system in an effort to increase user base, but we are in NO position
to be not supporting things in an effort to force authors to use a
modern compiler. That argument is right out.
if we are having a big z-gcc2 section or whatever, then thats a different
matter, that is not what 'dropping the spell' usually means. if i read
drop in all the appropriate places as "move to this other section for
spells that cant use gcc3", then i have no qualms.
i also agree with you on almost everything else. USEGCC2 is a hack,
and obviously its a good idea to try and get everything onto gcc3
that we can, but my concern was that a number of spells simply arent
going to make the cut, and those spells shouldnt just be dropped out
of support. from what ive gathered not much has gone on in the way of
making a section for these and the bugs are all listed as fix or drop,
and im not about to stand behind a choice to drop a large portion of
our grimoire simply because the author didnt know that something would
change in gcc3 and wrote their code using all the functionality of
gcc2.
obviously i either missed something, or it just went unsaid what your
plans were, and im fine with those.
thats all.
<jest>
now if you want to invoke godwins law ;) sure go for it, but i never
compared any one person or group to fascists (nor did i say hitler
or nazi), i just said that this fix or drop way of doing things is
strikingly fascist, fascism is typically characterised as reactionary
and chauvanistic.
reactionary is something to the effect of:"makes policy based upon
current circumstances rather than creating policies to prevent problems"
and chauvanistic is something to the effect of:"varying rights based
upon superficial characteristics"
why just dropping a spell completly based on it using an older compiler
is fascist is left as an exercise to the reader.
</jest>
anyways, so long as we can keep spells around that work fine with gcc2,
but not necessarily in the standard system, im happy.
sorry for the unintended flamage, i guess i came off a lot more pissed
off then i really was.
> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > SM-Grimoire mailing list
> > SM-Grimoire AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/sm-grimoire
> >
>
-
[SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Julian v. Bock, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Andrew, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Ryan Abrams, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Andrew, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Eric Sandall, 10/14/2002
- Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells, Eric Schabell, 10/15/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Jonathan Evraire, 10/15/2002
- Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells, Eric Schabell, 10/15/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Eric Sandall, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Andrew, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Ryan Abrams, 10/14/2002
-
Re: [SM-Grimoire]gcc2 spells,
Andrew, 10/14/2002
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