Re: Let's use gcc-4.2, not 4.1 -- OpenMP

David O'Brien wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 12:20:03PM -0700, Scott Long wrote:
>> "Vendor support" from the FSF is a myth.  FreeBSD has been chasing this
>> myth for years, and it never ever turns out to be true.  GCC 3.4 was
>> rushed in a fast as possible on the exact argument that 3.4 had vendor
>> support and 3.3 did not.  That was 18 months ago (May 18, 2005), which
>> is not very long.  In that 18 months, the FSF apparently has stopped
>> supporting 3.4, 4.0, and 4.1.  Calling that "vendor support" is insane.
>> The FSF only "supports" the latest and greatest and possibly the
>> previous release for a short period of time.
> 
> I just love how you're the FreeBSD self-appointed GCC technology expert
> yet you don't follow GCC development nor attend the GCC Summit...
> 
> In these 18 months the follow releases happened:
>     3.4.5
>     3.4.6   (Mar 06 2006)   giving 23 months of support to this branch
>     4.0.0   (Apr 20 2005)
>     4.0.1
>     4.0.2
>     4.0.3
>     4.1.0
>     4.1.1
> and
>     4.1.2 is planned for early 2007
> 
> GCC 4.0 quickly led to 4.1 so some things could be done that aren't
> allowed their stable branch.  Most see 4.1 as later 4.0 releases.  So
> that's over your 18 months threshold.
> 
> The GCC 4.2 branch was created on 20 Oct 2006 and is headed toward
> release in early 2007.
> 
> A few things 4.2 has over 4.1 were presented at the 2006 GCC Summit
> http://www.gccsummit.org/2006/speakers.php
> A few of the things are:
>     OpenMP for C, C++ and Fortran (gomp)
>     Decimal Floating-Point
>     New tree reassociation pass
>     Load partial redundancy elimination
>     Replace backend dataflow
>     Code Factoring Optimizations
>     Section Anchor Optimisations
>     Remove old loop optimizer
>     Support for IA-64 speculation
>     Sign Extension Removal
> 
>> Yes, the industry moves fast, but that's no reason to fool ourselves
>> into thinking that the FSF will support GCC 4.2 a day after they
>> release 4.3 and start working on 4.4.
> 
> After GCC 3.4.0 was released there was three 3.3 releases after that.
> After GCC 4.0.0 was released there was two 3.4 releases after that.
> After GCC 4.1.0 was released there was one 3.4 release after that.
> After GCC 4.1.0 was released there was one 4.0 release after that.
> 
> Just because you don't agree with the conservative stable branch commit
> rules GCC follows doesn't mean those developers don't support their
> product.  Or rather the case probably is you don't understand the GCC
> commit rules and branching.
> 
> The general rule is no new features in a stable branch - only
> regression and bug fixes.  3.4.0->3.4.6 had plenty of bugs fixed,
> as did 3.3.0->3.3.6 and 4.0.0->4.0.3.  That's not support?
> 

Thank you for the explanation.  That doesn't match the reason that I was
given in May 2005 for needing to get to GCC 3.4, nor does it match
comments from others in this thread that GCC 4.2 is needed because there
is no support for GCC 4.1.  Maybe these people don't understand what
'support' means either.  Dunno.  Anyways, thanks for the explanation.
I still maintain that FreeBSD was on a toolchain treadmill for many
years, and it's nice to be off of it and not worrying about a toolchain
upgrade hanging over every release.

Scott