COBOL XML PARSE: Why, What, and How?

Last year the GCC COBOL runtime library added libxml2 as a dependency because COBOL defines XML parsing and generation as part of the language. Thus was born an engineering challenge and controversy. Should libxml2 become part of GCC? Should it be linked statically or dynamically? Who will be responsible for CVE reports and security updates? Who, indeed, will maintain libxml2, now that the maintainer has stepped down?

Just what every compiler project wonts on their plate on a Monday morning.

This talk is about weighing engineering tradeoffs and what those weights are, what we decided was important, and what, probably, we agreed to do.