On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 23:40, Philipp Thomas wrote:
There is a *big* difference! 2.96 was based on a snapshot of the gcc development tree, while our 3.3 is, as 'gcc --version' shows, a prerelease version which we hoped would have been released by the time the masters were ready to be shipped to the plant.
Yes, RedHat was naughtier than SuSE was, but I still believe that using gcc 3.3 took SuSE closer to the cutting edge than what perhaps was healthy. I do understand the economics and the reasons SuSE had for doing what they did, that does not however mean I agree 100% with them. And if SuSE Pro 8.1 could have a gcc_old package, SuSE Pro 8.2 certainly could have had one as well.
Granted, most of the system might have been compiled with gcc 3.3,
Neither might nor most. Our automatic build system makes sure *all* packages are compiled by the same compiler.
At least there is consistency in the madness.. ;-)
Please SuSE, by all means go cutting edge, but leave something around so people can take one step back from the edge should it not fully work as intended...
There was *no* way around using 3.3. The improvements where too big to be ignored and we definitely needed it for the AMD64 platform. Believe me, maintaining different versions of a compiler in parallel is a nightmare!
That depends entirely on the goal of the exercise. SuSE placed the need for an AMD64 capable compiler higher than the need for a compiler that consistently would be capable of compiling kernels without choking on them, segfaulting here there and everywhere while compiling them. True, gcc 3.3 does seem to be capable of compiling things, all I am saying it that I do not feel entirely comfortable with the results. Gnome is particularly bad for crashing apps etc. Saying that, the KDE crowd should not jump around in glee at me saying this, as I have not used KDE on here, and there is a good chance KDE would have as bad a time as Gnome is having. And before people say if I am using ulb packages I can't point the finger at SuSE for that, the crashes happened before I even put the first ulb package on the system. I think I have headed most things off at the pass now.. ;-)
Right, that's my rant over. I do have asbestos pants on, so let the flames begin... ;-)
Grab 3.3 release from /pub/projects/gcc/8.2 on ftp.suse.com or its mirrors and try again :)
I have had that version of gcc 3.3 installed since about 24-48 hours
after it was put in ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/pthomas/.../
As far as I can tell, the pre-release on the DVD and this update are
doing equally bad job of compiling for example 2.4.22-pre5 or
2.4.22-pre9 (my current kernel).
All this criticism aside, I am very happy with SuSE Pro 8.2. All in all
it is the best version of SuSE I have used so far, it is just that there
are niggles and it is not entirely nice on a Centrino laptop. Since
installing this IBM X31 with SuSE Pro 8.2, I have had a worse
track-record of hard hangs and oopses etc than I could possibly have
imagined Windows 95 being capable of.
I do realise that the hardware is very new, and support for it is
lacking, but I was not prepared for the hassle it has given me. All I
hope is that if I do point out the niggles, there is a chance it might
be a patch or a fix for some of them and it will steadily get better.
Regards,
--
Anders Karlsson