FSF, gcc & C++

FSF, gcc & C++

Posted May 5, 2003 13:09 UTC (Mon) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659)
In reply to: FSF, gcc & C++ by Duncan
Parent article: KDE Has Tea With Stallman

> FSF recommends against C++? Strange to hear that when their
> most successful project (gcc) puts so much effort in making C++ better.

Actually, not so much, for that, anyway. I'm not sure why the negative recommendation...

Not sure, but my guess would be that the ABI keeps changing, one change each from g++ 2.95 to 2.96 to 3.0 to 3.1 to 3.2 -- four changes in rapid succession! (Yes, 2.96 was RedHat's fault, but that still leaves three due to gcc.) Ironically, this has its biggest impact on proprietary software, which breaks irreparably when linked against C++ libs that get rebuilt (e.g. Qt, KDE), though of course free OSes which upgrade gracefully such as Debian also need to work around it carefully. The Kompany deals with this by using only static linking, resulting in a big waste of memory and disk space. So C++ is a PITA when used for core libs which lots of software must link against.

The fact that with gcc 3.x (formerly egcs) it's far more open than it was previously...

<nitpick>I think you mean 2.95, which was the first release merged with egcs.</nitpick>

---

(Log in to post comments)