Re: Potato and egcs
On Mon, 5 Apr 1999, Stephen Pitts wrote:
> I was under the impression that there are illegal constructs in 2.0 that
> GCC likes but EGCS hates, and that these problems were fixed in the 2.1 development
> tree some time ago. The whole GCC/EGCS thing is mostly political, IMHO, as
> many agree that EGCS is the superior compiler. There was a big thread on -devel
> discussing whether glibc2.1 was pulled because it doesn't compile with GCC 2.8.
> --
Well, it does not matter which is the better compiler. A kernel is a
machine-code beast in many areas. If you want to get really efficient, you
sometimes need to rely on how a compiler generates certain assembly
language. In low-level device drivers and in some areas of the kernel
where you need to get "cute" with the machine code, changing a compiler
can break things.
Yes, there are many that have been using EGCS with success, there are
other than have reported problems. It could be that those reporting
problems are using different kernel configurations. In any case,
patches are needed to the kernel sources in some areas to compile with
EGCS. EGCS will usually not compile a stock kernel right out of the ftp
archive.
I really do not care if you want to make EGCS the default, just have both
choices so if I DO have problems, I can go back to gcc and at least have
things set the same as the kernel developers when I go ask for help.
Lately they will ask which compiler you are using then tell you to switch
to GCC and see if that fixes it before asking again.
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