Re: egcs

[David Edelsohn <dje%watson.ibm.com@localhost>]

>>>>> Todd Vierling writes:

Todd> On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, David Edelsohn wrote:

Todd> I'm referring to the various reports I have read on 
egcs-bugs%cygnus.com@localhost,
Todd> which I've read since the egcs beta days.  Out of all the
Todd> platforms that 1.0.3 supports, only i386 and sparc have fairly solid C
Todd> codegen; other platforms are missing some bits in optimization (and some,
Todd> like arm, will sometimes generate broken code without optimization).  The
Todd> generalization about 1.0.3 is pretty valid - just ask random people at
Todd> Cygnus how much they would trust 1.0.3 for big production projects. :)

        This depends on the platform and Architecture.  Cygnus has
switched their releases to an EGCS base.

Todd> I've been wary of running egcs 1.0.3 on anything but i386 for a while
Todd> because of this.  There have been too many "this is broken" reports with
Todd> valid code that have been replied to with, "Fixed in 1.1 mainline."  C++ 
is
Todd> worse - it's rather broken even on i386.

        Again, every compiler has bugs.  With gcc-2.7, we always said
fixed in gcc-2.8.  There always will be bug reports and those always will
be fixed in the next release.

Todd> You'll note that I keep saying i386 works well in C:  that's Linux's
Todd> mainstay architecture, and also the one that had the worst liberties taken
Todd> by programmers that you later mentioned.

        Linux/PPC and MkLinux use egcs-1.0.3.  The latest Linux/PPC CD and
MkLinux DR3 was just released and shipped with that compiler.  Yes, it has
problems but nothing earth-shattering.

David