Re: gcc vs egcs

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca>]

On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, fantumn (Steven Baker) wrote:

> Okay, I don't want to start a holy war or anything here, but I have some
> questions about egcs and gcc.
> 
> First, was wondering _what_ the differences between gcc and egcs were.

It is mostly a matter of version
  gcc 2.7.* has been used forever and some code tweaks some bugs init
  g++ 2.7.* is a non-ansi C++ compiler and some code uses ansi C++
    features or g++ 2.7 specific featurs
  gcc 2.8 is a new gcc release that is seemingly becoming widely used on
    non-linux platforms (at least my univ has upgraded every machine)
    it is mostly compatible with 2.7.* but cannot compile a 2.0 kernel at a
    high optimization level (the inline ASM in 2.0 relied on things 2.7
    did)
  g++ 2.8 is a more than 2.7 ansi conforming C++ compiler, and again code
    written with 2.8 probably doesn't work with 2.7
  egcc <whatever> is gcc 2.9-BETA (or 3.0-BETA) in effect, it supports
    more/less platforms and has more optimizations and other things
  eg++ is like egcc and is largely compatible with g++ 2.8 however it
    implements even more of the C++ standard (still not all :<)

Debian uses eg++ for our g++ because 2.7 is effectively useless (it
encourages code that will not work on other C++ compilers) and we use 2.7
for our gcc because nobody has patched the 2.0 kernels to work with
another gcc. Effectively 2.7.* is dead and all development is focused on
egcs - apparently the gcc people will take code from egcs to create the
next gcc releases or something. 

Jason