Comments on: Key open-source programming tool due for overhaul

New version of GCC compiler software is likely to create higher-quality, faster programs.

Mandrake Linux 10.2 may ship with GCC 4.0

GCC 4.0 is in the Cooker repository which will
soon ship as Mandrake Linux 10.2 Community. Even
if Mandrake elect not to ship it with the main
distribution, it will be trivial to install from
Cooker. This is not pie-in-the-sky, it's landing
as you read this.

[Rick S.]

MDK 10.2: Maybe so, but only as a Developer's tool

This is only a guess, I don't work for MandrakeSoft. But with MDK 10.2 beta-2 now over 10 days old, I expect to see an RC-1 very shortly. It would be INSANITY to "hope" for interoperability between GCC 3.3.x and GCC 4.0.x without a long, long testing cycle. AFAIK, none of the Packages in the betas have been built with GCC 4... and you don't suddenly decide to recompile everything, and "hope", this late in the game.

GCC 4.0.x can and probably will be included for the purpose of Developers compiling their own creations. MDK 9.1, a partial migration from GCC 2.96 to GCC 3.x (Sun Java was 2.9.x, but your other browser plug-ins were generally compiled as 3.x-- OOPS) was the worst MDK version of the last 4 years, due mostly to the 2.9.x/3.x Build conflicts. I told everyone to stay on 9.0, then go directly to 9.2.

GCC 4.0 test versions included in Fedora Core 3

As the subject says, RPMs for gcc 4.0 are already in the Fedora Core 3 (FC3) distro, in addition to the default gcc-3.4.2.

Incidentally, the upgrade from gcc 3.2/3.3 to 3.4 already provides a significant performance boost both to the kernel and userland in FC3, as compared to earlier Fedora distributions. I'd recommend upgrading to FC3 across the board - that's what I'm doing to all my systems, both server and client desktop.

[Richard G.]

FC3 packages were recompiled?

I've recently downloaded FC3 and installed over my FC1 installation. I've just spent the last two weekends doanloading and installing most all the updated packages available using the Up2Date tool.

I havn't noticed any change in performance from FC1 to FC3, particularly with X applications. I used Gnome for the last year and that window manager has always felt a little sluggish compared to my Windows 2000 installation.

Even though GCC4.0 is available, I'm not sure anything was recompiled with it. I suppose the point of Fedora Core is for end users like myself to take the time to recompile an app and test it. I know so little about X11 and X apps in general; but hey, nows as good a time as any to jump in a learn how to optimize X Server and X apps for speed.

I was seriously considering spending the $400.00 to buy Intel's x86 compiler for Linux, since I know that compiler optimizes code very well for speed on x86 chips. Maybe I'll hold off and see how GCC compares with Intels compiler for speed.

[Stomfi]

Patent Issues

Does GCC contain patentable software concepts, and would software compiled with these concepts be infriginging GCC concepts, methods, etc.
It would be funny if all of MS software fit into this basket.