Re: gEDA-user: Installing gEDA from 20050820 Suite CD on Fedora

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> >> no, this is good news.  I've had to fix so much broken software on my
> >> alpha becuase of sloppy typecasting it isn't even funny.
> >
> > I've run into similar headaches with my amd64 machine.  If you forget
> > to prototype a function that returns a pointer, you crash.
> > sizeof(int) is not the same as sizeof(long) or sizeof(void*).  Etc.
> 
>    This definitely IS good news.  

I'm glad to hear that everybody thinks that all this breakage is good
news since in some abstract sense this will force open-source
programmers to maintain better type discipline.  Unfortunately, most
programming errors I am aware of are malloc/free errors which gcc
still permits, but never mind that detail. . . .

Meanwhile, in the real world we have a large problem:  Lots of broken
open-source EDA software.  Who will fix the problems?   

Lessee. . . . who owns what??

*  GTKWave is essentially abandoned.  Somebody needs to adopt it & fix
   it.
*  Gerbv is still owned, so it stands a chance of getting fixed, but
   when? 
*  Icarus Verilog is actively maintained by Steve Williams, so I am
   confident that he will be on it when his schedule allows it.
*  GSpiceUI is actively maintained, so it will probably get fixed, but
   when? 

So of the four non-compiling programs, three will likely be fixed
eventually (hint hint, developers), and one may be dead forever if it
is not adopted.  Any volunteers?

DJ:  Since you wear a Red Hat these days, are there people in your
organization who might be interested in adopting some of these
programs and submitting patches to get them to work with gcc-4.x?  I
am most worried about GTKWave, which has been recently abandoned.  

I am happy to look at some of them, but, frankly, my free time is in
very short supply nowadays. I will look at some of the issues, but
can't promise to do so soon [1]. . . . .

Meanwhile, this is an opportunity for new folks to make a real impact
by submitting patches which fix the type problems!

Stuart


[1] Remember what happened to my promise to work on the PCB
documentation. . . .