Timur Tabi <ttabi@interactivesi.com> said:
> ** Reply to message from Horst von Brand <vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl> on
> Wed, 27 Sep 2000 21:47:07 -0400
[...]
> > Your compiler being? I for one wouldn't trust others, C++ is still very
> > much in flux in gcc...
> Watcom C/C++ 11.0b, which is soon going to be open source. It's not
> available for Linux, however.
And what makes you think the code produced by it will interoperate with the
code generated by gcc? You won't be able to compile the whole kernel with
Watcom; and if you could, you'd trip over the (unwarranted) assumptions the
C code in the kernel makes about the optimizations made by the compiler,
and over stuff written _just so_ so that gcc generates the very best code.
Even just using a newer gcc version tends to be a lot of fun and fireworks...
[...]
> > Gripe #1 is complete nonsense (not _that_ thread again...), gripe #2 is
> > mostly nonsense (sure, Linux could still have the internal interfaces from
> > 1.0, but the cost would be prohibitive for an OS that wants high
> > performance on machines that are at least an order of magnitude larger than
> > they were then).
> Oh, I understand why #2 is necessary, that doesn't mean that I don't hear
> people complain about it anyway. On a side note, I consider lack of a real
> kernel debugger to be evidence for #1. But I don't want to kick that dead
> horse again.
Please. Why do you mention #2 as evidence against Linux, when you agree it
is necessary? And I'd say again that Linux is a shining example that lack
of a builtin kernel debugger creates lots of complaints (#1), but
contributes to an excelent product in spite of the complaints.
> > I'd be a bit more careful. It is in large part those "completely
> > ridiculous, nobody will ever be able to write decent software that way"
> > whims that got Linux to where it stands today.
>
> Very true!
One of them is "no builtin debugger" (#1), another one is "use gcc's C to
its fullest", so is "break what needs to break, now" (#2), then you have
"program in the open, let everybody see what is going on". These are
exactly the targets of most complaints about the process, but they are an
integral part of the process. Without them, there would be nothing to
complain about.
I'd better go back to writing a patch now.
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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