[fpc-other] Fork

[Florian Klaempfl]

Am 22.10.2010 03:21, schrieb Adem:
>  On 2010-10-22 02:50, Henry Vermaak wrote:
>> 2010/10/21 Adem <listmember at letterboxes.org>:
>>> On 2010-10-22 01:23, Henry Vermaak wrote:
>>>
>>> Did you notice the word 'promises'?
>> Somehow you have to prove these "promises".
> And, how exactly do you expect them to be proved?

Features. Examples why it fixes this or that bug. I didn't see a simple
example why splitting the parser into syntactic and semantic parts gives
any advantage: the parser in FPC is simply something which works as
desired, it has few open bugs (if any at all) and bugs in it are easy to
fix.

Typical example for a major rewrite might be unit compilation/loading:
the remaining bugs cannot be fixed with the current apporach (well, at
least the current developers don't see how to do it, currently, it is
stuck at fix one break one), it requires a major redesign. It will also
turn upsidedown of the module handling which might break a lot of stuff
in short term, however, there might be hope that a better design (we are
aware of the flaws of the current design and no, they aren't childish
things like shortstring usage) allows to fix the remaining bugs of unit
handling in the long term.

Further example: register allocator. The current register allocator is
nice but for compilations without optimizations it is too slow. So
making the register allocator interface pluggable (it is already to a
big regard) and add a new simple and fast register allocator is
something which has a benefit.

> You make it sound like some of those religious orders where you have to
> spend years of your life... just to prove your piety.

Other people spent years of their life into getting something working
and now suddenly somebody pops up and thinks he can do better? Well, I
know these people, they create a big mess and disappear after a few
months and leaving a mess behind.

>
> Meritocracy out, monasticism in? :)

The main merit counter in FPC is the bug tracker.