Re: Alternatives to gcc (was Re: gcc 4.3: when will it become standard compiler?)

Anton Shterenlikht wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:15:52PM -0800, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> the end. Take Gentoo Linux: it's a Linux distribution riddled with
>> choices -- so many bloody choices that one has to make to get a
>> working system, that just one library going south with the wrong
>> option can set you back hours or days in order to get up and going
>> again... we shouldn't go down that road or we'll just be begging for
>> pain, if not from a support end, then from a user endpoint because
>> we'll be more efficient manufacturers of rope than ever before, and
>> users will be isolated from folks trying to reproduce their issues.
> 
> As a FBSD user I'm really happy with the current balance between
> freedom of choice and order. This was the thing that attracted me
> first to FBSD (v 4.9), after being thoroughly confused by linux anarchy.
>>From my point of view this is the ideal balance, and this is what makes
> FBSD stand apart from linux and other BSDs.
> 
> Too much choice is not always a good thing.
> 
> yours
> anton
> 

.. but having NO or a very RESTRICTED choice could lead to a dead end, 
see performance, modern parallel techniques (OpenMP) and new 
built-in-silica -features. If the 'dictated choice' of the compiler 
leads also development of the OS's interna (by taking care of having no 
specific features like SSE3/4/4.1/4.2 for basic libc-features like 
memcopy etc due to the danger the compiler/binutils will not target this 
in all cases or whilst the development of the compiler stagnated and 
therefore those features could not be used), this could also be the end 
for the OS.

Switching back to an hopeless outdated relict from the past (pcc) means 
having years of development and invention bringing those compiler suits 
back to the recent state of the art and this means the OS that relies on 
those strange political directions could end up behind competitors. This 
may sound stupid for several people here, but Within the 13 years with 
FreeBSD now, I saw many departments switching from FreeBSD to Linux and 
moneyflow is in most cases directed towards expected profit. Since BSD 
isn't developed as an academic approach of an OS, it is highly dependend 
on a pseudo-commercial success finding new donations hiring developer 
(not scientists, what a pitty).