Re: changing "configure" to default to "gcc -g -O2 -fwrapv ..."

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Daniel Berlin" <address@hidden> writes:

| On 29 Dec 2006 19:33:29 +0100, Gabriel Dos Reis
| <address@hidden> wrote:
| > "Daniel Berlin" <address@hidden> writes:
| >
| > [...]
| >
| > | In fact, what they told me was that since they made their change  in
| > | 1991, they have had *1* person who  reported a program that didn't
| > | work.
| >
| > And GCC made the change recently and got yy reports.  That might say
| > something about both compilers user base.  Or not.
| >
| Right, because the way we should figure out what the majority our
| users want is to listen to 3 people on a developer list instead of
| looking through the means we give users to give feedback, which is
| through bug reports.

And surely, this specific issue did not come from users through a bug
report.

| We've gotten a total of about 10 reports at last count, in the many
| years we've been optimizing this.
| 
| > Please, feel free to ignore those that don't find the transformations
| > appropriate, they are just free software written by vocal minority.
| 
| Wow Gaby, this sure is useful evidence, thanks for providing it.
| 
| I'm sure no matter what argument i come up with, you'll just explain it away.

Not really.  I've come to *agree with you* that we should just ignore
those that don't find the transformation useful for real code: they
are vocal minority.  You have strong data that show that since that
transformation has been done in another compiler since 1991, only 1
person reported a program that didn't work.  The count of 10 reports
is most certainly to be accounted for uncertainty inherent to
measurement tools, and concur with the number 1 reported for the other
compiler since 1991. 

Do we have evidence that real world code has been broken?  Barely.
People just invent these things out of the air.  They showed some
codes; has anybody certified the authenticity of the code?  I've seen
nothing to that effect. 

Consequently, if the vocal minority insists, we can point them to the
paragraphs of the C standard that declare the operations
undefined. And if they really do complain that the transformations
break real world code, we can decree that they are part of 3 
people on developer list, therefore not part of the users that should
be listen too.

| The reality is the majority of our users seem to care more about
| whether they have to write "typename" in front of certain declarations
| than they do about signed integer overflow.

yes, let's care about syntax, semantics is unimportant.

-- Gaby