Re: pkg/42727 (gcc 34 does not compile)

[David Holland <dholland-pbugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR pkg/42727; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-pbugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: pkg/42727 (gcc 34 does not compile)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:53:29 +0000

 this didn't get to gnats, and I didn't notice at the time:
 
    ------
 
 From: John Marino <marino%netbsd.org@localhost>
 To: David Holland <dholland-pbugs%netbsd.org@localhost>, 
pkgsrc-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
 Subject: Re: pkg/42727 (gcc 34 does not compile)
 Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:42:19 +0100
 
 On 12/20/2011 9:56 PM, David Holland wrote:
 > 
 >   >   What is the minimum platform requirement for NetBSD?
 >   >   Fixing 3.4 would not be trivial.  Compiler work in general is very
 >   >   difficult and time consuming.  Upgrading florist and removing
 >   >   gcc34-based Ada should be the long-term plan here.
 > 
 > Ok then, the submitter should use gnat-aux. I hadn't realized gcc3-ada
 > and gcc34-ada were deprecated; we should wait until after 2011Q4 is
 > branched before ripping them (both?) out, but then we should probably
 > go ahead and nuke them.
 
 Ada is an ISO standard language.  The first version was approved in
 1983, and
 the second version was Ada-1995.  The third version is Ada-2005, approved in
 2007, and Ada-2012 draft was just approved last week.  GCC 3.3.6 and
 GCC 3.4.x would not support Ada-2005, which was a milestone.  I didn't call
 these compilers "deprecated", but it's not a bad description.  They would
 probably be fine for Ada-83 and Ada-95 programs, but then again I don't know
 how much testing those compilers were put through.  When I got GNAT, the BSD
 support was terrible.  No NetBSD, no OpenBSD, FreeBSD was there but
 broken, it was a mess.  I still have to fix things now and then, so I
 suspect these
 GCC 3.x compilers weren't perfect anyway.
 
 On top of all that, it seems the original committer isn't maintaining
 them.  That
 said, supporting NetBSD 4.0 is not trivial.  There's a lot of
 platform-specific
 configuration.  Even between 5.1 and 5.99 there were several platform
 changes I had to account for.
 
 
 >   >   As an aside, the next release of gnat-aux is available and it adds
 >   >   Fortran and Objective-C on top of the C, C++, and Ada that
 >   >   gnat-aux-20110627 provides, so it's really a top class compiler.
 >   >   The only question is if I will be allowed to get it into Q4 due to
 >   >   the freeze.  I think at a minimum I would need to build all Ada
 >   >   packages on both NetBSD 5.99 and DragonFly-master before this is
 >   >   considers.
 > 
 > That is the sort of thing that should wait until after the freeze.
 > 
 Yeah.  The counter-argument is that C++, Objc, and fortran aren't built by
 default and the Ada code between gcc 4.6.1 and 4.6.2 is identical for all
 intents and purposes.  The bug fixes were on the middle- and back-ends, so
 the "risk" for a mid-freeze upgrade is nearly nil, and the reward is two
 additional optional languages.  Something to think about.  I'm in the
 middle
 of a libm upgrade for DragonFly though (brought on by Fortran support,
 continued for C99 support) so it's hard to get the time for the full
 testing
 that it should have.
 
 John