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4 <FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>
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5
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6 <P><B><I>In medias res</I></B></P>
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7
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8 <P>There are two major topic which always causes huge dispute and flame on the
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9 <A HREF="http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch">mplayer-users</A>
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10 mailing list. Number one is of course the topic of the</P>
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11
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12 <P><B><I>GCC 2.96 series</I></B></P>
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13
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14 <P>The <I>facts</I> : <B>MPlayer</B>'s compile process needs the
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15 <CODE>--disable-gcc-checking</CODE> to proceed upon detecting a GCC version
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16 of 2.96 (apparently it needs this option on <B>egcs</B> too. It's because we
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17 don't test <B>MPlayer</B> on egcs. Pardon us, but we rather develop <B>MPlayer</B>).
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18 If you know <B>MPlayer</B>, you should know that it has great speed. It
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19 achieves this by having overoptimized MMX/SSE/3DNow/etc codes, fastmemcpy, and
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20 lots of other features.
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21
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22 <P>The <I>background</I> : there were/are the GCC <B>2.95</B> series. The
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23 best of them was 2.95.3 . Please note the style of the version numbering.
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24 This is how the GCC team numbers their compilers. The 2.95 series are good.
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25 Noone ever saw anything that was miscompiled because of the 2.95's faultiness.</P>
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26
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27 <P>The <I>action</I> : <B>RedHat</B> started to include a GCC version of <B>2.96</B>
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28 with their distributions. Note the version numbering. This should be the GCC
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29 team's versioning. They patched GCC 2.95.3 . They patched it very deep.
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30 They patched it <B>bad</B>. RedHat saw it was bad, but decided to ship it
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31 anyways (even with his "<I>Enterprise-ready</I>" distributions). After all, more
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32 users try it, the more bugreports they get, thus bugfixing and development
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33 goes faster. Development? GCC 2.95 was good enough, where did they want to
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34 develop more? Develop GCC in parallel with the GCC team ? (the GCC team was
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35 meanwhile testing their new <B>GCC 3.0</B>)</P>
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36
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37 <P>The <I>result</I> : the first RedHat GCC 2.96's were so flawed, that nothing
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38 above <I>hello_world.c</I> compiled. RedHat immediately began making
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39 Service Packs - ups, so they immediately began patching the bugs. They
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40 could have backed out to 2.95 if they wanted. Meanwhile major Linux programs'
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41 like <B>DRI</B>, <B>avifile</B>, <B>Wine</B> and the <B>Linux kernel</B>
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42 developers began wondering why do they receive these new interesting
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43 bugreports. They obviously didn't consider it a good thing, they'd have
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44 better things to do.</P>
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45
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46 <P>The <I>statements</I> : most developers around the world begun having
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47 bad feelings about RedHat's GCC 2.96 , and told their RedHat users to
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48 compile with other compiler than 2.96 . RedHat users' disappointment slowly
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49 went into anger. Some guy called Bero even put up a page that describes
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50 that GCC 2.96 is not incompatible, but 2.95 was incompatible ! If we
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51 assume this is the case, we should greet RedHat for upgrading our GCC, and
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52 flame all who opposes. But I wonder : why didn't they help the GCC team
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53 <B>to fix</B> their "incompatibilities", why did they instead fork, and
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54 did it on their own? Why couldn't they wait for GCC 3.0 ? What was all good
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55 for, apart from giving headaches to developers, putting oil on anti-RedHat
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56 flame, confusing users? The answer, I do not know.</P>
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57
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58 <P><I>Present age, present time</I> : RedHat says that GCC 2.96-85 and above
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59 is fixed, and works properly. Note the versioning. They should have started
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60 with something like this. What about GCC 2.95.3-85 ? It doesn't matter now.
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61 Whether they still use kgcc for kernels, I have no information. I don't search,
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62 but I still see bugs with 2.96 . It doesn't matter now, hopefully now <B>RedHat
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63 will forget about 2.96</B> and turn towards <B>3.0</B>.</P>
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64
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65 <P><I>What I don't understand</I> is why are we hated by RedHat users for
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66 putting warning messages, and stay-away documents in <B>MPlayer</B> .
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67 Why are we called "brain damaged", "total asshole", "childish" by
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68 <B>RedHat users</B>, on our mailing list, and even on the <B>redhat-devel</B> .
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69 They even considered forking <B>MPlayer</B> for themselves. RedHat users.
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70 Why? It's RedHat that made the compiler, why do <U>you</U> have to hate us?
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71 Are you <U>that</U> fellow RedHat worshippers? Please stop it. We don't hold
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72 a grudge against users, doesn't matter how loud you advertise its contrary.
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73 Please go flame Linus Torvalds, the DRI developers (oh, now I know why
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74 there were laid off by VA!), the Wine, avifile. Even if we are arrogant,
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75 are we not the same as the previously listed ones? Why do <B>we</B> have
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76 to suffer from your unrightful wrath?</P>
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77
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78 <P>I'm closing this topic. Think over it please. I (Gabucino) personally begun
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79 with <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A>, then used Mandrake (sorry I
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80 don't know their URL), now I have <A
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81 HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.com">LFS</A>. Never held a grudge against
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82 RedHat or RedHat users, and I still don't. Hate is only comfortable. It
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83 won't bring you anywhere.</P>
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84
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85 <P><B><I>Binary distribution of MPlayer</I></B></P>
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86
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87 <P>I'm too moody now for this.</P>
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88
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89 </HTML>
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