Re: [MiNT] Mint patches

[Alan Hourihane <alanh@fairlite.demon.co.uk>]

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 11:33 +0200, Peter Slegg wrote:
> On Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:43:39 , Vincent Rivière <vincent.riviere@freesbee.fr> wrote:
> > Peter Slegg wrote:
> > > I was thinking ahead to what might be done once a release of GCC 4 is
> > > ready.
> >
> > The only problem may be about static libraries (such as zlib,
> > libpng...). They may not be compatible across multiple compilers.
> > However, the binary compatibility of the C language is quite simple. In
> > recent versions of GCC 4, I tried to keep the settings close to GCC
> > 2.95, so I think there is no binary incompatibility (and if there are
> > some, we have to clearly identify them, make simple testcases, and fix
> > them). However, there is probably binary incompatibility issues with
> > C++, but I don't think it is very important because there are not very
> > much C++ libraries.
> >
> > About packages providing only executables (tar, coreutils...): no
> > problem, just compile them with the new compiler, anyone will be able to
> > use the resulting software.
> >
> > So let's go ahead !
> >
> 
> Is it still worth freezing the current RPM distros for a while as
> a fall back while the packages are updated to GCC 4 ?
> 
> A lot of packages need to be updated to the current or at least
> newer sourcecode wherever possible but that is a much bigger task.
> Getting popt to build gave me a small insight as to what is needed
> and I didn't manage to get it into an rpm.

I've done a lot of work recently on getting quite a few packages
updated.

It's no small feat, and I've got a few fixes in my local tree that's
going through more testing locally. 

Alan.