Re: port some changes from master to branch-2.5

[Akim Demaille]

Hi Joel,

Le 30 déc. 2009 à 21:08, Joel E. Denny a écrit :

>> There is quite some work here :( We have too many branches alive.  I'm 
>> sorry I don't help more; making some releases would relieve you from 
>> maintaining so many different versions.
> 
> I think we should roll 2.4.2 soon.  I can do it if you're too busy.  

I don't see when I would do it :(  I'm sorry I failed you on this one, I meant 
to release it some time ago.  But never managed to spend enough time on it.  
Please, proceed whenever you fee like doing it.

> However, there are at least two issues now that we should address first:
> 
> 1. Florian Krohm reported a problem with %prec.  Unless there are 
> objections, I'll soon push the latest solution I proposed:
> 
>  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00039.html

I agree with your proposal.

> 2. You and I have discussed putting together a survey for our users.  I 
> asked gnu-prog-discuss for advice on a free survey tool with free hosting.  
> So far, there haven't been any suggestions that seem to do what we need 
> and still satisfy the FSF.  I later noticed that a voting system for 
> Savannah is actually one of the points discussed at the latest GNU hackers 
> meeting.  In summary, I'm thinking it may be a while before we find 
> anything we can use.  Maybe we should just postpone the survey until after 
> the 2.4.2 release.

Yes, maybe we should.  At Gostai, we recently discovered http://uservoice.com/. 
 I've not used it yet, but it looks very nice.

> In any case, I'm growing less inclined to ask our users for permission to 
> move to C99 in the front-end.  I've been finding it difficult to resist on 
> the 2.5 and master branches.  C99 is over a decade old, so I think we 
> should feel free to move forward.  Of course, I understand that the 
> backend is a different issue.

I concur.  Actually, the other question is moving to C++ :)