On Sat, 27 Jul 1996 23:00:20 +0200 (MET DST, Peter Gerwinski peter@agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de wrote:

Hello again,

there was a bug in my GPI stuff: File types did not survive transport through a GPI file. I am sure this was not the last bug, but now a very useful physics program works, so I am optimistic.

gpc-pg-1.2-2.7.2.tar.gz has been updated.

Release?

I know of two good reasons not to release 2.7.2 (yet):

1) Remaining bug(s). Last time I looked, that "functions returning a string are called three times" bug was still there. That's a serious problem for anything bigger than "Hello world". Also (I mentioned before): gpc fails two of the "paranoia" Pascal compiler float tests because it loses significant digits. I'd be carefull with that physics program, Peter.

2) Almost all messages / email I read about GPC are not about "compiler bug X keeps me from using it" or "feature Y is missing" but "HOW DO I INSTALL THE THING ON MY SYSTEM ?" "Where's the docs" is a popular one too.

That's why I'm busy rewriting configuration scripts using GNU autoconf and have created .bat files for the dos version. Then, building it is reduced to "configure ; make" I have it done for the RTS, am working on GPC itself now. I think it should be able to locate gcc sources and objects by itself (if they are in a reasonable location). It works great for the RTS already.

Arguments in favour of release: 1) New features (These have to be mentioned in a "NEWS" file. I think we have (a) better BPascal Objects (b) Improved module support, but there must be other user-visible changes as well.

2) Releasing 2.7.2 because gcc-2.6.3 is obsolete is an argument, but I don't think we'll have to wait much longer for gcc 2.8 and from what I've seen so far, it's not radically different from gcc-2.7.x (internally). So porting gpc to 2.8 should take too long.

If this thing is to be released in one or two weeks I think we should make a "release candidate" so everybody can check wether his patches are in and binaries for all platforms can be built.

/janjaap

--- Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." [The Tao Of Programming]