gcc question
heh. okay. the topic's ambiguous. i apoligize
if you have any comments on this, please read
on, it's basically a question concerning debian's
position between 2.95/2.96 and 3.0. if you're sick
of hearing about it. stop reading now, flame me,
and that's the end of it :)
anyway. i've had this discussion a few times with
various people, but i figure i may as well get the
"official" position of the debian-gcc team, regarding
redhat's so called gcc 2.96. i'm not a compiler
expert, but i can understand the issues involved
basically, where i personally stand, is that 2.96 is
a redhat construct, that has bad c++ handling
(although i can't say 2.95 is better :) ) compared to
gcc 3.0. it makes things harder for developers,
because they have to maintain their code on two
compilers, not one, which makes it harder for them
(or us, since we're not using the "simple" distro.)
and that generally, redhat were blurring the line
by releasing something that they claimed was
an official stable release, which it technically
wasn't. it also seems to detract from the bug
fixing and testing of gcc 3.0. if they'd forgotten
about 2.96, and worked on 3.0 it'd get there
that much sooner, and be a better release for
all of us...
so, to my question: what's debian-gcc's official
position on this matter. i know Ben is working
REALLY hard on the gcc 3.0 snapshots (which
i've tested, personally think he's doing something
good for both the gcc team AND debian by helping
it get tested, while not forcing people to use it)
but where do we stand, and how do we reconcile
our supposed "unwillingness" to accept the redhat
so called standard? are there any technical issues
that would be usable against 2.96 that are pertinent
to the situation? or is it just not worth the trouble
doing the "stepping stone" approach that redhat are
using by forcing themselves to do the gcc dance again
when 3.0 comes out?
thanks for a) reading b) replying if you DO have comments
c) making debian work :)
Andrew 'ashridah' Pilley
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