[geeks] galeon Doesn't Suck that much....

[David Cantrell]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 12:39:20PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On Tuesday, April 16, 2002 at 08:51:56 (+0100), David Cantrell wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: [geeks] galeon Doesn't Suck that much....
> > On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 08:27:14PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > > [ On Monday, April 15, 2002 at 23:07:42 (+0200), Jochen Kunz wrote: ]
> > > > GCC is knowen to make bad, or at least suboptimal, code on all RISC
> > > > platforms. Installing it to make my live easier is no choice, as I am no
> > > > whimp. I _want_ to die hard. ;-)
> > > All of the nearly 50-odd supported NetBSD platforms, running on 10-16
> > > different CPU families to date (depending on how you count them), use
> > > only GCC, and at least four of those are strictly RISC.
> > I fail to see any contradiction here.
> Jochen suggested gcc may generate bad (and "at least suboptimal") code
> on "all" RISC platforms.  NetBSD runs fine on RISC platforms (definitely
> better than "bad", and at least optimally enough to be chosen by very
> careful engineers (eg. NASA) in place of supported vendor sytems even
> when said vendor systems claim to have better compilers).

You know as well as I do that vendors' claims and vendor support are not
worth much.  And whilst NetBSD may *run* on those platforms, that doesn't
mean that it is running optimally - and AFAIC, sub-optimal == bad.  But
then, as I said earlier, you don't choose NetBSD for performance.

> > > I haven't heard too many people complain about NetBSD's performance.
> > No, but then, people run NetBSD because it's often the only choice other
> > than $vendor_OS, so they are usually choosing it for reasons other than
> > performance.
> Some of the people (eg. NASA) "choosing" NetBSD on RISC platforms are
> not only using it in place of vendor operating sytems (and sometimes
> even compilers) that they have partly already paid for anyway.  They are
> (or at least were) also spending a great deal on contributing core
> development efforts to NetBSD (and thus indirectly to OpenBSD :-).  You
> don't do that to get a final product that has "bad code"!  :-)

I don't think you understood what I wrote.  You certainly didn't reply to
it.  Again, you are confused about the meaning of "bad".  English has this
annoying habit of overloading words with several meanings.  Perhaps English
isn't your first language so the confusion is understandable.

You seem to think "bad code" == "bad source code".  When I used the phrase,
I meant "bad (ie sub-optimal) object code".

And when a business contributes code to a project, I was under the
impressio ntaht they did it because it benefitted to business.  If the
benefits outweigh the costs of doing something that is less than perfect,
they'll do it.

-- 
David Cantrell    |    Degenerate    |    http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  With ... the fact that Linux has become so easy to install that
  certain species of bacteria are now being hired by MIS departments,
  what was once the domain of rigorously trained, highly specialized
  professionals has devolved into the Dark Land of the Monkeys.
     -- Greg Knauss