ORN: In a previous interview I did with Richard Stallman, he stated that gcc will include ProPolice. I hope this is this good news for you. Is there any other technology that you would like to see imported into gcc?
Marc Espie: OK, this might be the scoop you're looking for.
This is not news to me. This is definitely not good news. In this instance, Richard was all talk, and no action. There is absolutely nothing going on that indicates that ProPolice will be a part of future GCC releases.
Let me publicize that more. The GCC people are going to say they haven't had any luck collaborating with Etoh Hiroaki.
I've inquired into the problem, I've offered to help by acting as liaison between the GCC developers and Etoh Hiroaki. I got a lukewarm response at best.
Right now, the ProPolice technology is not considered stable enough for inclusion in GCC. Technically, the stuff Etoh does is a nice hack that plays interesting games with GCC internals. Those games are actually not really supported inside of GCC. (ProPolice assumes the frames have a given internal representation, which is 99 percent the case in practice, but is not part of the GCC internals' contract.)
And this is it--this is as far as ProPolice integration so far has gone. Richard asked for ProPolice to be integrated, which does not cost him anything. It's just a PR move, as far as I'm concerned. No resources have been devoted in actually pushing for ProPolice to be integrated.
The GCC people are handling other stuff, which is more important for them, which is something I quite understand.
There is absolutely nothing going on where ProPolice integration is concerned.
Yes, there's a lot of work. Ask the OpenBSD developers how many issues we had to solve in gcc in taking ProPolice from the "proof of concept" stage to "integrated compiler technology in the gcc we ship." Hundreds of hours. Sweat and blood.
Well, right now, ProPolice stops at GCC 3.4. No one has a working ProPolice for GCC 4.0. No one is devoting enough resources to ensure this will happen. And you think we will switch to GCC 4.0? Think again.
Instead, GCC 4.0 will ship with a framework called mudflap, which does about as much as "flap, flap, flap" flying through code. It catches one valid bound violation every April the 1st, and complains about valid code every other day of the year.
No ProPolice in sight.
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