On 05/03/2011 11:32 AM, Charles Plessy wrote:
the recent archive rebuild uncovered a large number of GCC 4.6 build failures (that could been already forseen from Launchpad). In the long run, I find very impressive the contribution from the major Linux distribution to their upstreams for keeping them up to date with recent toolchains. However, given my experience of repetitive patching cycles with earlier GCC updates, it would be pointless to spend a lot of energy updating our packages now if it is only to realise in few weeks that the next GCC update would require yet another header.
Please note that the bug reports for build failures with GCC 4.5 were filed 16 months ago [1]. So you had the chance to address these in the previous release cycle too. Lucas only had the resources for a rebuild test now, so that's why you didn't see these earlier (a rough list can be at [2]). Results from the Ubuntu natty rebuild test did differ too much in package version numbers to be used for a bug filing in Debian [3].
I am sure the QA team would welcome rebuild tests on other architectures too. Feedback from some port maintainers about the usability of 4.6 is still outstanding, so I can't say which architecture will end up with which compiler version.
GCC usually has a twelve months release cycle, so you'll see the next set of missing include headers in spring 2012, and in Debian, if unstable isn't frozen by this time.
Matthias[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ftbfs-gcc-4.5;users=debian-gcc@lists.debian.org [2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ftbfs-gcc-4.6;users=debian-gcc@lists.debian.org
[3] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=ftbfs (covering all ftbfs)