Subject: Re: C vs. prototypes (was: Problems with gdb under NetBSD 1.0 )
To: D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.planix.com>
From: Ted Lemon <mellon@vix.com>
List: current-users
Date: 12/20/1994 12:23:18
> Take a pill friend.  It's a small tangent that grew out of the discussion
> of problems with gdb on NetBSD.  And it isn't really that off-topic.

I am not your friend, and if you continue to take such a dismissive
tone with me, I think it's a safe bet that we never will be friends.
This would be a shame - for the most part, you seem like a fairly
reasonable person, and I know I try to be.   I am sorry if my previous
message came across as harsh - it wasn't intended to be.   Perhaps you
didn't intend to be dismissive either.

Whether or not discussing replacements for gcc is on-topic, nobody has
seriously proposed doing that work in this discussion thread, and
therefore I would argue that it is at least as far off topic as this
metadiscussion.   Several people *have* mentioned that a free lint has
been made available, and it would certainly be appropriate for
interested parties to discuss getting that working.

In general, I think that there are much more interesting things to
discuss on this mailing list than compilers - I'd rather think of the
compiler as a solved problem and start thinking about loadable device
drivers and a user-interface design that would make NetBSD accessible
to people who aren't interested in (or capable of) learning how to
administer a unix system.

There have been quite a few off-topic discussions recently on the six
NetBSD mailing lists that I routinely read.  I'm not against these
kinds of discussions - when I have time I'd even like to participate.
But I'd like to be able to differentiate them from the stuff that I
*need* to look at.  If we want a forum for coffee-shop discussions
about compiler theory, I don't think current-users is it.  Maybe we
should have a netbsd-discuss mailing list for this purpose.

			       _MelloN_
--
Ted Lemon							 mellon@vix.com
+1 415 477 5045

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