C++ incompatibility history [LWN.net]

C++ incompatibility history

Posted Mar 26, 2008 23:03 UTC (Wed) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027)
In reply to: whatever by elanthis
Parent article: Striking gold in binutils

The C++ version incompatibility and interoperability nightmare was still very much alive only TWO years ago.

C++ had a non-standard ABI on early Linux systems, leading to constant breakage of C++ programs. Upgrading one's system would often lead to many or sometimes even all C++ programs no longer working. This hasn't happened in many, many years, ...

Fedora Core 3 was still leading edge in August 2005. Its then-current software updates had gcc-c++-3.4.4-2 and compat-gcc-c++-8-3.3.4.2 because there were incompatibilities between 3.3.4 and 3.4.4. In September 2005, the newly-issued Fedora Core 4 had gcc-4.0.1-4 which was again incompatible with 3.4.4. Fedora Core 5 was released in March 2006, finally signalling that FC3 truly had ridden into history.

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C++ incompatibility history

Posted Mar 27, 2008 0:27 UTC (Thu) by solid_liq (guest, #51147) [Link]

The was a gcc problem. gcc had ABI compatibility problems leading into the 4.0 release with C too, not just C++.

Also, Fedora is not the baseline standard.

C++ incompatibility history

Posted Mar 28, 2008 0:12 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

It's also important to note that the echoes of those historical compatibility problems can be with us for a long time. I try to use C++, but it's a trial, because I have systems that have roots going back to Gcc 2 days. There is no switch on these systems I can flip to recompile every program and library with a current compiler. A C++ program compiled with Gcc 3 will not work with an existing C++ library, and vice versa. So when I write new C++ code, I compile with Gcc 2, and probably always will.

I recently learned, painfully, that current 'ld' has a similar compatibility problem -- something to do with throwing an exception across object modules.

It's worth noting that none of these problems exist with C. I.e. the zero-headache alternative for me is to use C.

C++ incompatibility history

Posted Mar 28, 2008 3:49 UTC (Fri) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]

Heh - I'm still forced to use a EGCS 1.1 cross compiler for a certain embedded OS I work with.
Talk about painful.  Even more so: it's running under an _old_ version of cygwin on windows
(and if you know much about cygwin, you know the old versions had lots of interesting bugs and
multiple versions on the same system don't play nice together, so it ends up trashing the more
modern cygwin installs)... sigh...

Sorry, just had to whine...