Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcso!mjs
From: mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Possible HP-UX compiler optimizer bug (found while making Perl)
Message-ID: <7370045@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Nov 89 17:48:26 GMT
References: <4413@fmeed1.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 33

>>But it is not so bad (at 6.5) that you should should always use +O1.
>
>I'd beg to differ... an optimizer (level) known to be bad is not something
>I want to mess with.  The creation of undebuggable failures is less than 
>pleasant.

I disagree.  If your program fails with optimization turned on, but not when
turned off, at least you can be fairly certain the problem is due to the
optimizer, and modify your makefile to use +O1.  Seems to me this is easier
than spending hours setting breakpoints, watching variables, etc.  In any case,
"bad" is a relative term; I know of no optimizers with a better track record
for the first release, and there are probably no completely bug-free optimizers
out there even now.  And as I said earlier, all bugs which were reported on
6.5 have been fixed for 7.0.
 
>Anyway, can you say 'beta test' ?

We can, and we do.  Our beta sites uncovered several problems which we
diligently fixed.  We spend a lot of time per release in QA (this is one thing
that differentiates HP from many of our competitors).  Our biggest problem
(as a company) may be the long delay between a bug report and a fix reaching
the customer; this is in part due to our long release cycle - often code is
frozen months before a release.

We do welcome your bug reports.  The STARS system is the normal way of
reporting bugs, and we encourage customers to use it.  comp.sys.hp often
provides a faster channel directly to the engineers, but it is not usually the
best way to submit bug reports.

--------------
Marc Sabatella
HP Colorado Language Lab
marc%hpfcrt@hplabs.hp.com