There have been a number of discussions about moving to GCC 4.1 for etch. GCC 4.1 is considered superior to 4.0, in general and particularly on hppa (architecture specific ABI changes in 4.0) and m68k (many compiler errors are fixed in 4.1). Unfortunately, GCC 4.1 is much stricter than 4.0 (in particular regarding C++) code. In March, I compiled the entire archive with GCC 4.1 and found roughly 280 bugs in packages due to the increased standard conformance of GCC 4.1 [1]. Now, about two months later, roughly half of them have been fixed. I recently talked to the release team about the possibility of moving to GCC 4.1 as the default compiler (at least on some architectures) on etch. Obviously, this can only happen if those packages are fixed to compile with GCC 4.1, otherwise we would have a lot of RC bugs. The release team has now said that they will consider GCC 4.1 for etch if the majority of outstanding 4.1 specific bugs are fixed by the mid of June [2]. I think that we can make this happen and I'd like to organized coordinated NMUs. The release managers have said that as of now the 0-day NMU policy also applies to build failures with GCC 4.1. Even though NMUs are possible already, I suggest the following approach: - now - Sun, May 28: maintainers fix their packages so they build with GCC 4.1: bugs have been already been filed (and many include patches). In this period, other interested people generate and submit patches for those bugs which do not include one yet. - Mon, May 29 - Mon, May 12: 2 weeks of coordinated NMUs. Please email me privately if you're interested in helping out. - Mon, May 12 - Thu, May 15: recompilation of the whole archive with GCC 4.1 on several architecture to identify unresolved issues. - Thu, May 15: send a report to the release team I have filed the following meta bug to keep track of GCC 4.1 build failures in packages: #366820 Obviously, fixing those bugs is only a prerequisite and not a guarantee for GCC 4.1 as the default for etch. However, these bugs need to be fixed anyway. Also, we need to decide in the meantime which architectures can move to GCC 4.1 as the default. Porters, please review Matthias Klose's message and check for ABI and other issues [3]. Matthias will soon post a new status report to debian-gcc. In summary, there are ~140 bugs that need to be fixed in the next few weeks. If you're the maintainer of a package that does not build with GCC 4.1, please investigate this issue. If you're interested in this transition, please consider submitting bugs and doing NMUs. References: [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-gcc/2006/03/msg00405.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/05/msg00355.html [3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-gcc/2006/02/msg00173.html -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/
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