GDC subversion project

[Gabe]

=anders wrote: 
>What I meant was that it prove to be more successful to focus on GDC 
>now, since many people involved with Dsource seems to have understood 
>gnu-d.org as being a fork of their own efforts and no-one likes that ?

Like I said, just the compiler for now.

>Actually I think the Phobos license (zlib/libpng, could be any BSD-ish) 
>is better for the runtime than what LGPL/GPL. Even the glibc itself has 
>a special clause that allows you to link it with your binary programs ?
>
>If we are extending this beyond the standard library, then the wxWidgets 
>license is a lot more "popular" than the regular LGPL for same reason...
>(i.e. that it allows you to link with non-free programs, unlike Qt Free)

Again, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  I was planning some work on
my own, but nobody else has come forward with much in the way of an idea.

>It might be that getting GDC into GCC is a non-starter, if Walter and 
>David won't sign over the copyrights to the Free Software Foundation...
>Then again, it might be possible to include it anyway as long as it is 
>under the GPL license (or compatible, like Phobos zlib/libpng license)
>
>But that is something to clear with the FSF/GCC guys, and Walter/David ?

Copyright is irrelavent.  C is copyrighted.  So is Objective-C and C++.  Doesn't
matter.  We're talking about implementation, not language details.  As long as
what's written falls under the GPL when it's written, everything's kosher.
(Hell, C# is copyrighted, but that doesn't stop Mono development.)

>Sounds good, I should have binaries for GDC 0.17 kicking around here 
>somwhere. But those are NOT forks, just binary builds of the main...

Not forks yet, but what about 0.18?  I've contacted David a few times, and he
hasn't responded yet.  And I know that others have tried as well.  If the word
'fork' makes you uncomfortable, then just think of it as an 'extension'.

>I've posted several... (search for "RPM")
>There's also versions for Gentoo and Debian, but those need maintainers.

Hence why I didn't see anything when I looked, I guess, because I used to run
Gentoo and now run Xubuntu.  Also, might want to consider the BSD market, which
I know nothing about.

>The compiler is somewhat derailed, since we are missing David Friedman.
>
>In order for it to get back on track, we would most likely need him back 
>or "handing over" the development to a team. Forking isn't very useful, 
>it's already being split enough between DMD and GDC development I think.

Like I said, getting it back on track is the main point.  I was envisioning
handing over development to a few people here who are actively maintaining
patches.  If David comes back, great, he can lead us.  Until that time, more
people need to have commit rights to at least give the project a shot in the
arm.  Besides, if they wilfully screw something up, it's in version control --
what Gabe giveth of permissions, Gabe can taketh away.

NOTE: People have about 24 hours to send me any patches they might want to
include (and indicate that they're interested in doing some development) before
I start putting the new GCC-D into subversion and put it online.  Almost all
patches will be part of a new 0.18 branch (depending upon conflicts).

-Gabe