about the gcc 3.4.x problems

In my neck of the woods 'round here, problems with GCC 3.4.x are
not new.  For history's sake if nothing else, please take a look
at a msg thread I started on this list back in April 2004: 
<http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040402210539.70E945C3B>

We were _never_ able to compile kernels with 3.4.x -- there were
too many options & other things that are no longer supported.

I was attempting to notify y'all about various problems with the
newer GCCs WAY IN ADVANCE to hopefully get someone here to help me
fix these problems.  IMO there is no excuse for these bugs at the
current time.  It just seems to me everyone ignored my original
posts (and other people's) about these problems.  If someone had
done "homework" right here on the -current_at_ maillist, that person
would've known more testing was in order before committing this
3.4.x change.  I never got much useful feedback from that
April 2004 thread.

The problems with -Os and 3.4.x were known to the GCC team
themselves, too.  Pointers to this bit of info should be in the
mentioned April 2004 thread.  I also mentioned therein about how
I could not feel right in logging a bug at the GCC website due to
the FreeBSD patches being applied on top of their code.  I do not
know where the culprit is -- in GCC's src or in FreeBSD's patches?


Now... I have another bit of New Info to add to this discussion.

Apple is planning on using GCC 3.5 for the next big overhaul in
OSX called 'Tiger'.  This has been massively publicly reported in
the usual circles, so I'm not "spilling beans" about anything
covered in the NDA.  BTW I'm not sure if the Tiger pre-release at
the WWDC includes GCC 3.5 in its version of XCode (TPTB here
won't pay for such trips, nor will they pay for a higher ADC
account, so I'm not privvy to the new preview software), but at
any rate GCC 3.5 _is_ slated to be in XCode 2.0 when Tiger goes
final.

Currently we are still using GCC 3.3 in Panther XCode 1.2.

Here, then, is a point I need to make:

Why is Apple seemingly skipping GCC 3.4.x altogether?

To me this really looks like 3.4.x was having problems for them,
too.  3.4.x plain ain't ready for prime time PERIOD.

I never got much useful feedback from my April 2004 thread. 
So I had to drop our tests of GCC 3.4.x.

I'm *extremely disappointed* of many things going on in the past
few months (yanking MIDI support was #1 before this).  I'm trying
to be involved in as much of -current as I can.  And many of my
own-initiated discussions seem to go no-where real fast.

And then *BOOM* we are forced to use GCC 3.4.x with known bugs & all.
This surpasses yanking MIDI in my #1 Gripe List.

<sigh>

With each new GCC release, the noose gets tighter & tighter. 
I expect 3.5 will cause more code to be rewritten. 
By now I hope everyone involved will know to expect such
problems, be forewarned about it, and Test Test Test.

Thank you for reading this.


  --  Paul Seniura
      System Specialist
      State of Okla. D.O.T.