Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?

[Peter Barada <peter at the-baradas dot com>]

>BS.  Even the large disto builders do cross compilations a lot.

Yeah, I know.  I did consulting for a 'large disto builder'.  Do you
have a clue how long it takes to build the base packages for a PXA255
board(including X11 that won't even run on the board but is required
due to package dependecies)?  Can you think in *days*, and that was
more than a year ago.  Even then we were all concerned about the trend
in compliation speed.  Speak of what you *personally* know.

>I am getting pretty sick of this.  Can we now start discussing
>what GCC does do well, or otherwise, for further complaints
>remove me from the CC: please.

I've pulled you from the CC list, but I'm passing it on to the GCC
list in hopes that someone there cares more than you.  The RSS bloat
probelm is *not* going to go away, and *wishing* it away won't.

>I can't say all is good about GCC.  There are always ways to do
>things better.  But, as Dewar already pointed out, GCC just can
>not be perfect for everyone's needs.  I, for one, am very happy
>that we are finally pulling GCC out of the 80s, into the 21st
>century.  The compile time and memory consumption problems are
>obviously there, but just complaining is not going to fix them.

No, gcc is not perfect for all things, but the trend in resource
consumption is getting pretty serious.  As others have pointed out
before, no one complains about a resource bproblem until it gets large
enough that it made it inconvenient if not just impossible.

You don't complain to your car dealer when your car runs fine, but if
it craps out on the way to work, you'll be complaining pretty damn
loudly, expecially if its nearly brand new.

I develop GCC for ColdFire, and I have been contributing back changes
to GCC in the hopes that it will be a world-class compiler that I can
use for my work.  Unfortunately due to circumstances that have
*nothing* to do with GCC I have no choice but to build packages using
a GCC that runs natively in an Linux environment on my ColdFire V4e
embedded board where the resource constraints are *exteremely* severe,
and possibly an extra MB of RSS usage by GCC version-to-version will
be the difference between success and failure.

I have great faith in OSS and FSF code, and I don't want to demean the
valued contributions that people have made to it, but please
understand that Linux systems are built using GCC, whether its for a
workstation or an embedeed Linux device, and as such *should* consider
the problems that both encounter and not just favor the workstation end. 

-- 
Peter Barada
peter@the-baradas.com