Summary of exceptions support limitations in GCC 2.95.3

Summary of exceptions support limitations in GCC 2.95.3

[Jan Ringoš]

Hi everyone,

since unable to upgrade the firmware in embedded devices I develop for, I am 
stuck with GCC 2.95.3 (crosscompiler for ARM armv4tl), ELF target (elf2flt), 
Linux kernel 2.6.19 and binutils 2.14 20030612, and uCLibC 0.9.26 and 
STLPort (some version from 1999).

My question, because googling and browsing vast maillists archives took me 
nowhere, is:
Is there some kind of list of C++ features that don't work or are broken in 
GCC 2.95.3. I am especially interested in exceptions and RTTI. Exceptions 
seems to work for me only partially (if thrown once in the program's 
lifetime) and I would like to know if that, although wrong, behavior is 
consistent and/or described somewhere in detail.

And maybe the problem is somewhere else and not in GCC, there is no mention 
of C++ exceptions in http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-2.95.3/gcc_7.html
I will be grateful for any help or hint.

---
Jan Ringoš
www.ringos.cz 

Re: Summary of exceptions support limitations in GCC 2.95.3

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Jan Ringoš <jringos@tds.cz> writes:

> since unable to upgrade the firmware in embedded devices I develop
> for, I am stuck with GCC 2.95.3 (crosscompiler for ARM armv4tl), ELF
> target (elf2flt), Linux kernel 2.6.19 and binutils 2.14 20030612, and
> uCLibC 0.9.26 and STLPort (some version from 1999).
>
> My question, because googling and browsing vast maillists archives
> took me nowhere, is:
> Is there some kind of list of C++ features that don't work or are
> broken in GCC 2.95.3. I am especially interested in exceptions and
> RTTI. Exceptions seems to work for me only partially (if thrown once
> in the program's lifetime) and I would like to know if that, although
> wrong, behavior is consistent and/or described somewhere in detail.
>
> And maybe the problem is somewhere else and not in GCC, there is no
> mention of C++ exceptions in
> http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-2.95.3/gcc_7.html
> I will be grateful for any help or hint.

Unfortunately there are all kinds of C++ features that don't work in
gcc 2.95.3.  Current versions of gcc are much more standard compliant.

gcc 2.95.3 used a completely different exception handling mechanism
than current gcc.  I no longer remember how it worked.  As I recall it
did usually work as long as you didn't do anything odd.

gcc 2.95.3 did have RTTI.

I don't know of any documentation about what does and does not work
with regards to C++ in 2.95.3.  It's not the kind of document any gcc
developer would be likely to write.

Sorry this isn't much help.

Ian