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Date:      Mon, 4 May 98 9:10:04 PDT
From:      Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM>
To:        pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, obrien@NUXI.com, egcs@cygnus.com
Subject:   Re: GCC
Message-ID:  <199805041610.JAA18839@atrus.synopsys.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980503174423.2818J-100000@alcyone.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>; from "Gerald Pfeifer" at May 3, 98 6:26 pm

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> > In production shops, I've seen a lot more places go to gcc 2.8.1
> > than EGCS, so I feel gcc/g++ is better tested and stable. 
> 
> Guys like Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.com>, author of the "FAQ for g++
> and libg++", happen to disagree: 
> 
>    [EGCS 1.0.x] is considerably more stable than 2.8.1 and vastly
>    more stable than the gcc2 snapshots [...]

My statement above applies to C++.  For C, I'd say gcc 2.8.1 seems fine.

Those of us on both lists who see the reports know that the egcs testing
has been more thorough that the gcc 2.8.x testing.  Also, because
gcc 2.8.1 is missing some crucial backend fixes, I would be very cautious
about shipping any C++ code that uses exceptions with 2.8.1.  Those
false warnings you get with -O and -Wall are due to gcc 2.8.1's faulty
control flow analysis, and that faulty analysis is used as the basis
of optimization.  Of course, you can verify by careful testing that your
code is not being misoptimized, but since there is a better option
available you are better off using it.

gcc -fno-exceptions for gcc 2.8.1 is probably fine.  The scandal is that
the story FSF has put out as to why gcc 2.8.x took so long had to do with
exceptions -- and they *still* haven't gotten it right.





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