Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips [GCC 4 status]

Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips [GCC 4 status]

Posted Feb 24, 2005 1:48 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
In reply to: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips [GCC 4 status] by amacater
Parent article: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips

Given Fedora's intent to be a cutting edge, or even experimental, distribution it makes sense they would want to move to GCC 4 early. I am glad though that they are being at least cautious enough to stick with released versions.

RHEL needs to be much more conservative but I like that RHEL4 includes GCC4 as a preview. It is clearly described as such in the RPM description.

Let's be fair. It is not like they compiled the kernel with GCC 4.0 or anything. All the RHEL packages are compiled with 3.4.3. This is not like the 2.96 situation in my opinion.

Not only is it very useful to be able to preview GCC4 as a developer but given the lifetime that RHEL is supposed to have between upgrades it is only good planning to expect that people will want to use GCC4 in RHEL4 eventually. It seems totally sane that someone might want to use Fortran 95 under RHEL4 a year from now for example. This allows that to happen within a standard RHEL4 installation without requiring the the default system compiler moved to a newer version.

You can install the two GCC packages at the same time. Typing 'gcc' will get you gcc-3.4.3 and typing 'gcc4' will get you gcc-4.0.0.

Because you have to type 'gcc4' to get the new compiler I doubt anybody innocent enough to make the kind of mistake you predict is likely even to find gcc4. Your standard Makefile will be looking for 'gcc' and find gcc-3.4.3 for example (or nothing if the standard 'gcc' is not installed).

As for alienation, I would like to point out that RHEL4 includes compatibility libraries for 2.96 so even that past decision should not cause any problems for current RH customers.

RH makes their share of mistakes. I am glad to see them admit to some of them now. I am glad that the community works to actively keep RH and the other vendors in line. I do not think that we are served however by projecting a cloud over the company or whipping up negative hype for no reason.

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