Re: GCC 3.3 Questions: Should I Install? Should I install with ProPolice?
On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 17:44, David Z Maze wrote:
> Dan Anderson <dan@mathjunkies.com> writes:
>
> > I am trying to figure out Linux with the help of O'Reilly's /Running
> > Linux/. It recommends that I do not install new versions of compilers
> > unless absolutely necessary just in case things get broken by the new
> > version of the compiler.
>
> That sounds like FUD to me, unless maybe you're running something like
> Slackware (or maybe Gentoo) where you're compiling new versions of
> system programs frequently. On i386, I don't think there have been
> major problems where a compiler bug crippled unstable, even though the
> compiler updates fairly frequently.
>
> > I really want to install GCC 3.3 with ProPolice
> > (http://www.research.ibm.com/trl/projects/security/ssp/) enabled by
> > default. Will this really make compiling programs problematic?
>
> In theory, if the patch works, you should be fine. From their
> description of the patch, if it works as advertised, it shouldn't
> destroy your ability to compile things, and you can turn it off with a
> command-line switch.
>
> > Can I keep two versions of GCC on my system just in case it breaks
> > things? How would I go about doing this?
>
> If I were doing this, I'd install the modified gcc in a subdirectory
> of /usr/local (possibly using stow), give the top-level gcc binary a
> different name (gcc-pp), and then *maybe* install a symlink from
> /usr/local/bin/gcc to that. Then you'd still have the normal Debian
> gcc available in case something broke.
>
> --
> David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
> "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
> -- Abra Mitchell
You can have different versions of gcc as long as you install them into
different directories or with different names.
I think that gcc 3.3 is stable by now.
I don't know what it would take to change the name of the gcc in the
sources (I guess you will need them if you want to apply a patch), but
if you can find out then you could try naming in gcc-3.3-propolice or
something like that.
/usr/bin/gcc is actually a symlink, at list on my system, where I have
gcc 2.95 3.0 3.2 and 3.3 installed (probably need to start weeding them
out).
To compile the kernel using gcc-3.2 (which I do for the moment, probably
out of the force of habit) I use
MAKEFLAGS="CC=gcc-3.2" make-kpkg --revision=<...> kernel-image
This method should work as long as you have your makefiles written
properly (using CC environment variable instead of using gcc directly).
you'll probably want to do CC=gcc-<...> make <...> for a standard
makefile.
What version of gcc to use probably depends on how stable you want to
make sure it is, whether you have backups or the ability to run the
system if it fails, how much you trust the compiler, etc.
--
Micha Feigin
michf@math.tau.ac.il
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