Re: [MiNT] 030-version of gcc

[Petr Stehlik <joy@sophics.cz>]

V Ne, 23. 11. 2003 v 10:22, Frank Naumann píše:
> > That's your opinion. And you are heard by a lot of people. Your opinion
> > is quite important. Let other opinions be explained here. Your interest
> > may not be shared by everyone.
> 
> Yes, I hope other tell their oppinion here too.

I see in Debian that all architectures are moving to GCC 3.3.x. Not only
i386 but all the 12 (or how many) architectures - including m68k. The
compiler has improved since 2.95.x, there is no doubt about it. I admit
there were bugs in gcc 3.0.x but they have been fixed since then.

The new compiler is more strict and can explore more problematic C code
in compile time so it helps programmer to write better programs. It also
produces better code (hopefully).

I personally would vote for upgrading the Atari world to latest GCC. But
as I don't use Sparemint at all (I have something against the RPM format
- I am a hard DPKG fan) I can't estimate how much work is it to
recompile C++ libraries with the new compiler.

I can imagine that if the Sparemint offered an automatic net
install/upgrade system similar to apt that would allow me to get a
working system with one single command (without dependency hell) I'd
switch to Sparemint and then could help with the recompilation.

I can set up an ARAnyM compile farm on servers at the office and with
the available power recompiling the Sparemint would be a matter of
hours. And if cross compilers were used it would be matter of minutes, I
guess.

Petr

P.S. I wish the FreeMiNT 2.0 was finally released. This 10 years of
alpha stage hidden in CVS makes the non-CVS trackers feel like MiNT is
dead and so they switch to something else (like win xp). Arguing for or
against gcc 3.3.x is useless if there remains just a few people that use
it.