According to the documentation, this field is required for packages that produce potentially binary incompatible C++ libraries.
But it has a second function, namely to make sure that the package is compiled with a specific version of gcc, and here I see a problem:
There is at least one package, lesstif, that cannot be compiled with gcc-2.95.2 (crash message: "ld: -undefined: unknown parameter -L/usr/X11R6/lib"). Probably there are many more, because I am pretty sure that practically nobody has ever checked whether their package is compiling correctly with anything else than gcc-3.3. One shouldn't be required to check this, either, because gcc-3.3 is the standard on Panther, after all.
Now unsuspecting users who have their default compiler set to anything else than gcc-3.3 will run into trouble. And having gcc-3.1 or gcc-2 as default happens at least in two situations: Either after building a Fink package that requires this compiler and asks the user to run gcc_select, or after installation of the corresponding compiler package.
I ran into the problem with lesstif with a colleague who had just installed his developer tools, but had forgotten X11SDK.pkg. I showed him where to find it and told him, while he was there, to install the gcc-2.95.2.pkg as well. After this installation, the default compiler was set to gcc-2, and the installation of lesstif failed soon afterwards.
I think the "GCC: 3.3" should be enforced when there is no "GCC:" field.
If we really need a field that says: "Caution, this package may contain libraries that will be incompatible with anything compiled with a different version of c++", we should mark this differently.
-- Martin
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