------- Additional Comments From igodard at pacbell dot net 2004-11-24 22:12
-------
Thank you for the excellent explanation, but your explanation was redundant; I
do (and did) understand why the nature of the problem is opaque. I'm not filing
this bug because I don't understand; I'm filing a QOI report because the
initial
message wouldn't leave the average user with an understanding.
The actual compiler message in such a case would be much better if it contained
a brief explanation of the situation like the one you've given here, including
what the possibilities are, why you don't know, and what to do to narrow down
the problem on a generic operating system. I am *not* saying you have to fix
the
OS; I do feel that you *should* tell the user everything that you know,
including that you don't know.
This is a situation where message terseness is not a virtue. The existing
message is confusing and unhelpful, even to will understand the problem and
what
to do. I suggested an alternative phrasing; but anything would be better so
long
as it explains:
1) was terminated by the OS
2) could have been out of a resource, killed by user request, did a nasty (i.e.
segv), or something else OS dependent.
3) a generic suggestion for how to find out what was the actual cause
4) how to file a report is nothing else works.
gcc has a generic problem with its messages: they assume the user is
intimiately
familiar with the host, the language, and how the compiler works. This makes
lousy messages for your actual user community. This is another case of poor
message QOI.
May I suggest that you circulate this report and its discussion among your
collegues and see what they think about the general message philosophy and this
message in particular. I'm giving up here and won't re-open this again, but the
QOI issue won't go away just because I do.
Ivan
--
What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status|RESOLVED |UNCONFIRMED
Resolution|WONTFIX |
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18639
