On 1/8/06, Peter FELECAN <pfelecan at free.fr> wrote: > Sven Luther <sven.luther at wanadoo.fr> writes: > > > On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 09:53:08PM +0100, Peter FELECAN wrote: > >> Ken Mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com> writes: > >> > >> > Tested cross-compiler effort: > >> > binutils-2.16.1 - good > >> > gcc 3.3.6 - no > >> > gcc 3.4.5 - good (optional) > >> > gcc 4.1.0 - good (recommended) > >> > > >> > I'll tend to use gcc 4.1.0 and work my way through CVS as needed. Should > >> > be > >> > able to use this with other platforms as well for current NV (ON) > >> > builds... > >> > >> Sorry to repeat myself but gcc 4 branch is not of production grade; > > > > All major linux distributions are going to use gcc 4.0 for their > > next release, this includes at least debian, fedora core and ubuntu > > that i know of, and some of them have a release goal of a few month > > away only. I suppose suse is also in this group, so i have some > > doubts about your comments concerning the maturity of gcc 4.0. > > Sven, > > As you know, any tool also has a subjective quality. My appreciation > is in this category and based on regular reading of gcc related > mailing lists and bug reports. > > That all the bleeding edge Linux distributions wish to use the latest > shining compiler is something that I understand but doesn't impose the > same attitude in our project. We need something stable and having this > positively perceived quality, subjective as it is, I admit, and the > 3.4 branch is of this bread. >
Clearly our letters crossed in the mail. I thought we had made the decision to stay with the GCC 3.x branch for exactly the reasons that you cite; stability and dependability. I have no interest in following the Linux crowd in their pursuit of a bleeding edge compiler or tool set when we are working on a project that aims very high. Certainly the kernel for Polaris is no joke and should be treated with great care. I for one have built my tool chain ( for GRUB2 work ) with GCC 3.4.4 and have been very careful with the results of testsuites. People tell me that the bootloader at http://www.blastware.org/grub2/index.html works exactly as advertised. This makes me happy and I want the same results for my incarnation that I am working on today. I have completely shunned the compiler in Fedora Core 4 on PowerPC ( gcc version 4.0.1 20050727 (Red Hat 4.0.1-5) ) and used it only for my first bootstrap pass. All tools and libraries afterwards were produced repeatedly with my GCC 3.4.4 and toolchain in $HOME/local/bin etc. For the sake of clarity .. I thought we had made the decision to stay with GCC 3.x and GCC 3.4.4 to be specific. Am I wrong here ? Dennis
