breaking compatibility

["Loren Osborn" <loren at reflexive dot net>]

I hate to write in and complain, because I know that gcc is a great piece of
software, and know how much it has plowed the way for other open-sourced
projects, but I've run into some persisting issues with gcc (as it is in
CVS) that are really starting to annoy me.

I am a computer game developer... I recently ported our current title
(including the engine that most of our games are based on) to gcc...
This is not a complete port to a new environment as of yet, but getting
it to compile and run using gcc is our first step toward cross-platform
development. The port was non-trivial, but I feel it was well worth the
effort. (It helped us shake some bugs and ambiguities out of our code.)

Our current source-code tree builds perfectly find with a CVS gcc I have
at home, from last October... (There are some issues with -O, but that's
a specific compiler bug... not what I'm writing in about right now)
At the office I have been building current CVS builds of gcc for the last
few months, trying to get one to work... (Unfortunately, the template
support in the current stable gcc isn't advanced enough to handle our
blitter code, so we are confined to CVS builds).

Beside occasional compiler bugs (which are to be expected with an
active development tree) most of the reason why our code doesn't
compile with the current CVS gcc has to do with the folding of
libstdc++v3 that's begun to be folded into the mainstream over
the last few months.

It frustrates me greatly that either I'm forced to use old, broken
versions of gcc, or port our code-base to gcc once again.

Any usefull response welcome,

Loren Osborn
Reflexive Entertainment, Programmer.