Re: GCC 3.0 Release Criteria

[Mumit Khan <khan at NanoTech dot Wisc dot EDU>]

Geoff Keating <geoffk@cygnus.com> writes:
> 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.

On PE-COFF targets at least, this is allow C++ exceptions to cross DLL 
(Dynamic Link Library) bounary, such as the case when an application 
or another DLL catches an exception thrown by a DLL. This now requires
ugly hackery on the users part.

PE-COFF of course has nothing to do with Linux, but neither does the 
blurb from the criteria.

On targets where loading shared library is expensive *and* libgcc 
defaults to shared, why not build both and choose the right one at
link time?

Regards,
Mumit