George Vasick <George.Vasick at sun.com> writes:
> Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> > You really need both 4.3.2 & 4.3.3?
>
> My first choice would have been to replace the current gcc 3.4.3 with
> gcc 4.X and simply called it gcc. However, gcc 3.4.3 is part of the
> Solaris build environment and we must keep it until Solaris moves to a
> newer version of gcc.
How's the progress with moving ON (and perhaps other consolidations, I
don't know if they use GCC at all or rather prefer the Studio compilers)
from GCC 3 to GCC 4?
> The other aspect is customer support. We have customers who want to be
> able to test with a new compiler release while continuing to use their
> current release for production. We even have customers who want a
> specific bug fix back ported to their specific version of the compiler.
> They will not take the next update no matter how small the version
> number change is.
This may be a point where we have to say: this might have to be Sun's
problem, not the communities, especially if the current solution is so
incompatible with the way any other product is handled. This would be an
issue for my other examples as well: how do you handle this e.g. in
PostgreSQL? Or just let those customers not update they GCC installation
and keep it the way it is.
> > You don't believe even
> > micro releases are not safe or compatible upgrades? That's
> > just sad, and somewhat inconsistent with every other distro/OS
> > shipping gcc I've seen. (3.4.3 vs. 4.3.3, sure, but not
> > 4.3.2 vs. 4.3.3.)
>
> Solaris freezes on a specific release for its build compiler. What
> happens when they are on 4.x.y and we want to release 4.x.z?
Right, but even with the Studio compilers, this was handled by a special
distribution that included particular patches necessary for building ON. I
don't think this special requirement should affect all users of Solaris.
Rainer
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Rainer Orth, Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University
