heh. okay. the topic's ambiguous. i apoligize if you have any comments on this, please read on, it's basically a question concerning debian's position between 2.95/2.96 and 3.0. if you're sick of hearing about it. stop reading now, flame me, and that's the end of it :)
anyway. i've had this discussion a few times with various people, but i figure i may as well get the "official" position of the debian-gcc team, regarding redhat's so called gcc 2.96. i'm not a compiler expert, but i can understand the issues involved basically, where i personally stand, is that 2.96 is a redhat construct, that has bad c++ handling (although i can't say 2.95 is better :) ) compared to gcc 3.0. it makes things harder for developers, because they have to maintain their code on two compilers, not one, which makes it harder for them (or us, since we're not using the "simple" distro.) and that generally, redhat were blurring the line by releasing something that they claimed was an official stable release, which it technically wasn't. it also seems to detract from the bug fixing and testing of gcc 3.0. if they'd forgotten about 2.96, and worked on 3.0 it'd get there that much sooner, and be a better release for all of us... so, to my question: what's debian-gcc's official position on this matter. i know Ben is working REALLY hard on the gcc 3.0 snapshots (which i've tested, personally think he's doing something good for both the gcc team AND debian by helping it get tested, while not forcing people to use it) but where do we stand, and how do we reconcile our supposed "unwillingness" to accept the redhat so called standard? are there any technical issues that would be usable against 2.96 that are pertinent to the situation? or is it just not worth the trouble doing the "stepping stone" approach that redhat are using by forcing themselves to do the gcc dance again when 3.0 comes out? thanks for a) reading b) replying if you DO have comments c) making debian work :) Andrew 'ashridah' Pilley