Key open-source programming tool due for overhaul

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by finding areas in software in which a single instruction can be applied to multiple data elements--something handy for everything from video games to supercomputing.

GCC 4.0 also introduces a security feature called Mudflap, which adds extra features to the compiled program that check for a class of vulnerabilities called buffer overruns, Mitchell said. Mudflap slows a program's performance, so it's expected to be used chiefly in test versions, then switched off for finished products.

Also coming will be a preview of technology to compile programs written in Fortran 95, an updated version of a decades-old programming language still popular for scientific and technical tasks, Henderson said. And software written in the C++ programming language should run faster--"shockingly better" in a few cases, Henderson added.

GCC is a very general-purpose compiler. It can handle programs written in languages including C, C++, Java, Fortran, Pascal, Objective-C and Ada. It can generate software for processors including x86 models such as Pentium and Opteron, Sun's Sparc, Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC, IBM's Power and mainframe processors, Intel's Itanium, MIPS, ARM, Hitachi's SuperH and Motorola's 68000 series.

"The promise of GCC has been portability and cross-platform support over speed," O'Grady said.

GCC has about 10 core programmers, Mitchell said. The commercialization and professionalization wave that arrived with Linux and other high-profile open-source projects has affected GCC.

"In terms of people writing the lion's share of code, most are doing it for a living at this point, in contrast to 10 years ago," Mitchell said. "A lot of the development work is very time-consuming and needs to have a long-term commitment. It's hard to do it during a two-week break during semesters."

CodeSourcery, with about a dozen employees, makes money by selling services around GCC and related low-level programming components such as the GNU C Library (glibc) of pre-written software components. For example, other companies pay CodeSourcery to support new operating systems or processors.

Other options
GCC isn't the only option available to programmers, of course. It's not even the only open-source compiler.

A start-up called PathScale offers an open-source compiler that's compatible with GCC 3.3. "Our company is trying to be the GCC alternative for people who care about high performance," said Len Rosenthal, vice president of marketing for PathScale.

PathScale's compiler is a version of the Open64 compiler released by Silicon Graphics as open-source software. It's in use at several national laboratories for supercomputing tasks, but Rosenthal said the compiler produces faster software even with general-purpose programs.

Rosenthal understands what PathScale is up against with GCC. "It's everywhere," he said. But PathScale still has a strong ambition: "Our goal is to be the default compiler on x86," the chip family that includes Intel's Pentium, he said.

A better-established GCC competitor is Intel, whose compilers are recognized to be the gold standard for software running on x86 chips. James Reinders, director of marketing and business software and the products division, proudly points out that the widely used MySQL open-source database uses Intel's compiler.

But in a curious twist, the very same compiler engineers at Intel also help with GCC. That's because GCC is a crucial tool to bring software to Intel's processors. For example, Intel helped adapt GCC so it could produce software for its Itanium processor, Reinders said.

"Obviously it's well-adopted," Reinders said. "GCC has a role in the community that it would be foolish to think it's not important."

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.