Re: Is the gcc-3_3-branch creation still on target?

[Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.de>]

"David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org> writes:

> Are things still on schedule to branch mainline, creating the
> gcc-3_3-branch, on 15-Oct-2002?
>
> FreeBSD 5.0 will use some form of GCC 3.3 snapshot.  I know this isn't
> desired by the GCC Steering Committee to have another "gcc 2.96", but
> FreeBSD has little choice.  It ICE's on many popular packages, X11 as
> just one example.  It has serious optimization bugs for modern x86
> processors, for which the PR's aren't getting fixed.  It has regressions

Honza just fixed and verified a few PRs.  

Just getting off-topic:
Honza, I noticed you commit them this way:

Thu Oct  3 23:15:15 CEST 2002  Jan Hubicka  <jh@suse.cz>

        * i386.h (CPP_SPECS): fix defines for -msse, -msse2, -mpentium2,3.

The rule is to mention the PR number so that everybody knows which
report is fixed, in this case the ChangeLog should be:
       
Thu Oct  3 23:15:15 CEST 2002  Jan Hubicka  <jh@suse.cz>

        PR c/7242
        * i386.h (CPP_SPECS): fix defines for -msse, -msse2, -mpentium2,3.

Can you follow the example please? 

Ok, back to your claims: Did you report everything?  GCC 3.2 (and
neither current CVS from last week) ICEs on Linux/x86 and Linux/x86-64
while compiling X11 nor on any package that is in the current SuSE
distribution for these platforms.  So, please send bug reports that
are reproduceable.

> from 2.95 that aren't getting fixed.  All in all, GCC 3.2 is poo.  There
> needs to be a balance between adding new features, re-abstracting the
> code, etc; and basic usability.  So far the 3.x series has leaned too far
> to the former.  GCC 3.1.1 was the most stable of any of the 3.x
> compilers, but it has a broken C++ ABI and is EOL'ed by the GCC
> developers, which makes it a poor choice to base an OS on.

GCC 3.2 is pretty good, e.g. Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE use it as
basis for their current Linux distribution.

I understand that you want to switch to 3.3 but I would suggest the
following (that's how we have done it at SuSE and I guess Red Hat did
something similar):
- use the current CVS mainline for your work and test everything with it

- report all bugs that you encounter

- integrate regularly (e.g. using the weekly snapshot) the current CVS
  version into your system and start from the beginning ;-)

- release FreeBSD 3.0 with the final release of GCC 3.3.

This is quite involved but if you follow the development closely, your
permanent testing will help make GCC 3.3 a suitable compiler for your
environment.

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs aj@suse.de
   private aj@arthur.inka.de
    http://www.suse.de/~aj