LSB 2.0 and C++
Posted Aug 8, 2004 0:43 UTC (Sun) by
garloff (subscriber, #319)
Parent article:
LSB 2.0 and C++
Reading the comments, it seems like some things have not been said:
- LSB does specify existing practice; it's not about directing
distributions what they need to do in future. So putting C++ ABI v6 in
there is no option; you can't know if anyone will implement it. This
will likely be different in a year from now, and we'll have a new
LSB revision then.
- While it may be true that gcc-3.3 has bugs that make it deviate
from the v5 ABI, it's very very close. The deviation can be considered
a bug and if there's need, the distributors currently shipping
gcc-3.3. distros (and there are a lot) will likely fix that.
- Most people developing LSB compliant software will expect that the
software continues to run, also on systems that conform to newer
versions of LSB; so a warning note for the C++ specification may make
sense.
- By the same reasons, it may make sense to omit C++ from the
submission for the ISO standard.
- Many of the libstdc++ improvements can be done without breaking the
ABI; there's a CVS branch for gcc, which has most of them for a 3.3
gcc.
- gcc-3.0 was the first version to promise a stable C++ ABI -- not for
the libstdc++ (which was known to still be flux), but for things that
the compiler does, like name mangling and structure layout. It failed
because bugs were found. Some people in the discussion seem to imply
that v6 will be the final, last, bugfree one. I doubt it. I hope the
gcc developers work hard on keeping the C++ ABI stable finally, but
I don't believe we're there yet, also not with with gcc-3.4. Hopefully,
the frequency of changes decreased ...
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