Rugxulo wrote:
I've yet to see a Windows user (who is not also a Linux user) supporting Linux-only features. And then I have to read (see above) how Windows is underrepresented and not talked about enough.
Well, if you're not also a Linux user, how could you even know how to support Linux??
By asking Linux users exactly what they want and listen to their complaints when you don't cater to them enough. Sounds strange? Yet in the other direction, this is exactly what happens (see the comments I responded to).
Sure, one of the points of free software is that anyone can use it for any purpose, but there's also a rule: Those who code make the decisions.
:-))
And by this measure, if I look through the mailing list archives, Dos and Windows have actually been vastly overrepresented.
DOS overrepresented??? Nooooooo! Trust me, DOS is heavily shunned.
I said by this measure. Maurice is basically the only active Dos contributor (and he doesn't work on the compiler itself, but on building, packaging and units/libraries).
Besides, you can indeed ignore Windows (non-POSIX) if you want, but why would you want to?
Counter-question: Why should I want to support it. I see 3 possible reasons:
- It comes automatically (e.g., ANSI C functions, POSIX subsystem)
- I have some personal use for it (I don't).
- Someone pays me to do it.
Rugxulo wrote:
No, and sorry, that's not what I meant. ;-) I meant that some things are impossible to build or have horrible dependencies. In other words, I wonder what they were thinking! (This applies to any OS, lots of hard-to-reproduce builds from source code.)
Of course, this applies to any software, also whether free or proprietary (though the latter is obviously not seen by the public, but on the net you often read about proprietary developers moaning about their incomprehensible and difficult builds).
But with free software you can do something about it. In fact, when I find such problems in other software that I'm going to build more than once, usually one of the first things I do is to simplify the build process, as far as possible -- of course, it's not always possible, e.g. with GPC that depends on GCC we have to integrate into GCC's build system (though that's not so bad), and it's required to get both GPC and GCC sources and patch the latter.
And by submitting those changes I hopefully make building easier for everyone else, e.g. in GPC, quite early during my involvement, I made the GCC patch applied at least semi-automatically (including automatic backend version detection), or for GRX I wrote a configure script to avoid having to edit various files for each build.
Of course, there are many packages, so if you come across build problems (just like any other bugs), do something about it. I don't think their developers make the build hard intentionally, they just choose to spend their time this way or another (i.e., if they worked more on the build process, other features might be neglected). They can't please anyone, and the only ways to get those issues solved that you care about are do to it yourself, pay someone to do it, or just hope and wait ...
P.S. I don't know, how do you decide what to support and what not to support without pissing someone off? I say the more the merrier, but I know it's hard to do.
That's what we did in GPC (WRT platforms, dialects and other features). Of course, it makes maintenance more difficult, and it divides the user base which, as we see now, might be a serious problem for continued development, especially if the user base is not so large to begin with.
Prof Abimbola Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
Looks very useful, thanks. My suggestion is (at some point in time) to develop a repository of GPC units. BP used to have the SWAG archives, and there are all sorts of Delphi code repositories.
A good idea. However, someone has to do it. We tried it half-heartedly some years ago, but (see above) the time we spent as webmasters was time we couldn't spend on compiler development. So if there are so many who'd like to contribute but are daunted by the compiler internals as we always hear, why don't they do something like this? (Even it probably would have been more effective 10 years ago than now ...)
BTW, I hope it would be better than SWAG. I used to go there sometimes back when I used BP, but I found the average code quality quite low, and also much duplication. E.g., I remember there were lots of "CRT extension units". Most if not all of them were buggy, incomplete (did not even support many features of BP's CRT which they were meant to extend) and their extensions were often rather peculiar (single-purpose, not in the style of similar functions from CRT or just incomprehensible). So I think some sort of feedback, and willingness of authors to listen to it or let others do what's needed, would seem helpful.
Frank