Re: GCC 3.0 Release Criteria

[Geoff Keating <geoffk at cygnus dot com>]

Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:

>   http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.0/criteria.html
which says

> The libgcc library should probably be a shared library on many
> systems. As GCC 3.0 will contain other ABI changes, now is as good a
> time as any to make this change. It is as-of-yet unclear on exactly
> which systems libgcc should be a shared library. That decision will
> be made, and necessary implementation work will be completed, before
> GCC 3.0 is released.

I would be interested in knowing what benefits are hoped to flow from
this change.

I also propose one suggestion.  Loading shared libraries is fairly
expensive, particularly on x86 systems.  All applications will
presumably want to be linked with libgcc.  I therefore propose that
libgcc be part of the C library on systems where this is possible,
that is Linux and Hurd.

Finally, I can assure people that I will strenuously object to any ABI
changes on powerpc other than those that only affect C++ (I'm sure
everyone is aware that there is no consistent C++ ABI now anyway,
so there is nothing to lose there).

-- 
- Geoffrey Keating <geoffk@cygnus.com>