[NTLUG:Discuss] Evil GCC-2.96

[cbbrowne@ntlug.org]

Jim Wildman wrote:
> I've been using RH7.x since before it came out (I have a friend on
> the private beta testers list :-) )  The only thing I've had trouble
> compiling (and I build alot) is VMWare before it was 'officially'
> supported on the 2.4 kernels..not just RedHat.  I've yet to find any
> program that would compile on another distribution and not on RedHat 7
> due to gcc issues.  (I've run into bad code, bad autoconf, bad headers,
> but not compiler related issues)

It does not surprise me that you'd not find programs that wouldn't
compile; consider that:
  a) The _problem_ that is being griped about is object code
     incompatibility, not that you can't compile everything from
     scratch;

  b) The problems are almost exclusively related to G++, and, outside of
     KDE, there's not a _vast_ codebase of "Linux code" that is written
     in C++ that tends to be bundled with distributions.  

     The last time I used "ldd" to check /usr/bin for G++ library
     dependancies, about all I found was GROFF and Hylafax.  For all
     the trumpeting of the importance of C++, the C++ programs that
     dynamically link have been _vastly_ outnumbered by C programs for
     a LONG time...

     To be a wag, the kernel isn't written in C++, nor is XFree86,
     nor Emacs, nor TeX, nor Perl, nor Python, nor Apache, nor GLIBC.
     If none of those important Linux-related programs are written in C++,
     why would anyone consider C++ to be of any importance?  :-)

The problem that RHAT introduced was yet another aggressive introduction
of something not quite ready, which _worsens_ interoperability which
was supposed to be the point to things like LSB.
-- 
Christopher Browne
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/resume.html>
cbbrowne at acm.org
(613) 225-3689