[fedora-arm] Fwd: [FESCo] #847: Request to have guidance on growing use of LLVM

[Jon Masters]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [FESCo] #847: Request to have guidance on growing use of LLVM
Date: Thu, 10 May 2012 03:33:46 -0000
From: FESCo <trac at fedorahosted.org>
Reply-To: nobody at fedoraproject.org
CC: fesco at lists.fedoraproject.org, tcallawa at redhat.com,
limb at fedoraproject.org, toshio at fedoraproject.org

#847: Request to have guidance on growing use of LLVM
--------------------+----------------
  Reporter:  jcm    |     Owner:
      Type:  task   |    Status:  new
  Priority:  major  |  Keywords:
Blocked By:         |  Blocking:
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 = phenomenon =

 The secondary toolchain LLVM is growing in popularity. While this
 represents a good technology advance, Fedora is heavily invested (in
 staffing, experience) with GCC. It is my belief (and I believe that of
 others) that there is not room in Fedora for two fundamental toolchains
 without appropriate staffing and resources (which do not exist for LLVM).
 These things have a tendency to creep in as dependencies unless a firm
 policy or expectation is set. Therefore, I hereby request that FESCo
 provide guidance as to the acceptable uses of LLVM. Ideally it would be
 explicitly stated that it cannot be required for critpath beyond any deps
 that might already have been created, without explicit approval.

 If you do not act on this, I fear we will look back in a few years with
 growing dependency on tooling for which we do not have sufficient
 engineers to provide the level of technical support and development that
 exist with e.g. GCC today. I am not against LLVM. I like the technology,
 but adoption of such things should be carefully planned and co-ordinated,
 not creep in slowly over time because nobody said anything to stop it.