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Re: gcc 3.5 integration branch proposal
On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 11:08:15PM +0100, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> BTW, people with old machines always have the choice of staying with old
> software too.
Not really. Not when you want to compile similar stuff on a wide range
of machine. It's not as if you have a choice of `small optimizations,
fast compiler, correct compiler'. Staying with gcc 2.95 comes with the
price of being completely unable to even compile standard C++ code.
Maybe what we're doing with the OpenBSD project is somewhat unusual ?
but we've found out in the past that each new compiler has its share
of arch-dependent and arch-independent bug. There comes a point where
you prefer to have one single compiler, because that way at least,
you have to cope with just one set of arch-independent bugs.
Right now, we're probably going to end with both gcc 2.95.3 and gcc 3.3.2
active on different architectures at the same time, and the price in terms
of maintenance is steep.
Maybe most of you are actually working for companies, and so don't really
care about the toll in terms of human costs ? I mean, sure, hire a new
programmer, or buy a new $2000 machine. But real hobbyists ? We don't
really have ways to hire new people. And a new $2000 machine means less
network cards or gfx cards to play with and port drivers to.
That's part of the price of having a strongly coupled front-end and
back-end, I guess.
So, old architectures will stop when/if we switch to a slower GCC.
In such a case `keeping old software' == dead architecture. Thoroughly.
I wouldn't even dream of still running OpenBSD 3.1 today, judging by
the number of bugs we've fixed since then, and since the focus of
OpenBSD is still on security...