Andrew, Andrew Haley said the following on 06/20/08 20:55:
The changes we had to make to build OpenJDK with gcc 4.3 were to fix nonstandard C++ code and to turn off -Werror because gcc 4.3 is much more fulsome in its warnings. Rather than insist on using an older compiler, we would probably be better off fixing the code that generates the warnings.
It isn't compilation that is the issue (we should certainly fix the OpenJDK code to compile cleanly on a standards-compliant compiler) but the actual runtime behaviour of the compiled code. WE don't "recommend" the old compiler because it allows old sloppy code to get through, but because we've already uncovered the bugs that affect us at runtime, through literally years of use and testing.
David Holmes