The gcc-4.4 compiler is still the default compiler on DragonFly-3.3.
There seems to be general consensus on IRC that it's time to promote
gcc-4.7 to that role and have gcc-4.4 serve as the backup.
Is there any major objection to doing this?
From a pkgsrc point of view, over 11,150 packages build with gcc-4.7.
There are some older packages that fail the stricter gcc-4.7 checks that
are easily patched, but they take time to add. However, one could take a
page from dports where gcc-4.4 is the primary compiler for pkgsrc
regardless of which the system uses. So to summarize: gcc-4.7 can
already build most of what gcc-4.4 can in pkgsrc (plus some that it
can't), and users could put "DRAGONFLY_CCVER?=gcc44" in the
/usr/pkg/etc/mk.conf file if they want to keep using gcc-4.4 for packages.
There's only one known problem with gcc-4.7 right now: The plugin
mechanism introduced around gcc-4.6 doesn't work right. The world/kernel
doesn't use this mechanism and only 1-2 packages are failing because of
it. Nevertheless I'd like to fix it, so I'll attempt to do before before
a compiler switch. However, failing to do so shouldn't block the switch.
So as the title says, is there a good reason to hold off on making
gcc-4.7 the primary compiler?
John