Re: Compiling Debian from source, with GCC 3.4.2
Laurence Darby wrote:
[snip]
> I understand that the entire point of dependencies is to ensure things
> just work, but I'm trying to find out where SDE breaks, so the
> dependencies are impeding me. What do people do when they want to use a
> later version of GCC?
They install the new package in parallel to the old one, and build with
aprropriately set CC variable. The system default compiler isn't
supposed to get changed in a released version of debian, for simple
stability reasons.
> It has to work with apt, for the entire
> distribution. I could use the /etc/alternatives to redirect /usr/bin/gcc,
The rationale above eplains why there isn't alternatives support for gcc.
> but then packages like libc6 call gcc-3.3 directly.
And others call e.g. gcc-2.95. This is usually for a reason, the
maintainer of the respective package should be able to tell you more
about it.
Since you want to test it with 3.4, you may want to change the
package to invoke cc/gcc, and to not build-depend on a specific
gcc version.
> So yes, I have it set
> up so this happens:
> $ gcc-3.3 --version
> gcc (GCC) 3.4.2 mipssde-6.01.02-pre1-20041214
> ...
> and it's funny also having a binutils that dpkg says is at version 3.3...
>
> Now for the crunch: as SDE is based on 3.4.2, all the C++ errors caused
> by the daily abi change are appearing.
Sure, you have to start with rebuilding the C++ runtime, and then _all_
C++ programs.
> For example, see the achilles
> package: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=258481
This seems to be a minor bug, not an ABI problem.
> I could patch each package as I go, but I really want to know if there is
> any effort to "migrate" to GCC 3.4, as there a lot more c++ packages
> with similarly cryptic errors.
Currently the main focus is on releasing sarge, with gcc-3.3 as default
compiler. I expect the migration to 3.4/4.0 to start soon afterwards.
Most packages should pose litte problem, at least the amd64 port did
an alternative tree with gcc-3.4.
> So in my effort to compile Debian, is there anything else you think I
> should know?
Generally, http://www.debian.org/devel/ is a good starting point.
Thiemo
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