>>26
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Plugins
And some of the links from there.
I can't find the email I had in mind, where one of the GCC maintainers stated explicitly that the lack of documentation and incomprehensible, often changing interface are good things. But even in the page I've linked you can find indirect proof that this is indeed the official position (of some of the maintainers at least) that is argued against by the proponents of the plugin architecture. Like,
"We gain nothing by holding infrastructure advances in GCC. While GCC still has the advantage of being widely used, its internal infrastructure is still relatively arcane and hard to deal with. We have already kicked it into the mid 90s, but we still have a lot of ground to cover. An antiquated and arcane infrastructure will only help turn new developers away." -- which means that there are people holding said infrastructure advances.
I won't search any further, the concentration of crazy there makes my mind reel.
>>27 would be voided, you wanted to say?