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GCC 3.3 Update Status on NetBSD

Posted by michael on from the minor-issues dept.

Dan writes "Matthew Green says that the gcc3 update on NetBSD is going well. They are almost ready to switch several platforms including i386, sparc, sparc64, arm, mipsel, alpha. Mipseb and m68k are almost done. Sets lists need to be updated and building more kernels with gcc3.3 are the things still pending."

33 comments

  1. Waiting for 3.4 by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 4, Informative
    I hope they are not planning to stick with 3.3 for the indefinite future. Gcc-3.4 is where the major improvements are going, and its ABI is meant to be stable for a long time. The 3.3 series is just for practice, as it were. For example, getting iostreams to take advantage of NetBSD's UVM, and expose zero-copy I/O at the user level, will happen early in the 3.4 series. 3.4 is getting precompiled headers and other practical work on faster compilation.

    The same advice goes for Debian and the other distributions as well (although of course Linux doesn't have UVM yet). It would be a serious mistake to put in that much work just for 3.3 itself, although the work isn't wasted because after getting everything working on 3.3, switching to 3.4 should be (technically) pretty easy.

    1. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by ctr2sprt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I'm not worried about the ABI compatibility, I'm worried about the reliability of the compiler. gcc has been an extremely dangerous product for some time now. If you run anything more than -O you're in real danger of getting broken code, even on popular architectures and operating systems.

      If I were running things over at NetBSD HQ, I'd be much more worried about that than feature-completeness.

    2. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by mirabilos · · Score: 1

      Don't they say that (stable A[BP]I) every time? :)

      Okay, enough the flamebait. I've tried to update
      MirBSD (which went from ports-gcc-3.2.2 to in-tree
      backup gcc-2.95 due to a failure in the gcc 3.3
      update for the ports) to an in-tree 3.3 gcc, and
      somehow it failed.

      Right now I've imported gcc 3.3.1, but have no
      idea whatsoever if it'll work.
      If someone wants to help, reply (I get mailed).

      --
      My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And /. still does not get UTF-8 right in 2012. Wow.)
    3. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Ded+Bob · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You may always try the TenDRA compiler.

    4. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by badvictor · · Score: 1

      You got anything to back that up? Dangerous compared to what? THE most dangerous compiler out there is MS Visual C++. It does not comply with standards and often produces broken code. gcc on the other hand has a very good track record of keeping up with standards, and producing very robust code even with the highest level optimization.

    5. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "(although of course Linux doesn't have UVM yet)"

      What an utterly meaningless statement. UVM was a redesign of the Mach-derivied 4.4BSD VM (which was in turn a replacement for the original, highly VAX specific VM).

      Linux's VM is a totally seperate implementation from either the old Mach-based VM, or UVM.

      You might as well say "of course, NetBSD doesn't have NET4 yet"; of course it doesn't, it has it's own, seperate TCP/IP stack.

      It's because of people like you that I have to preface "I use NetBSD" with: "I'm not a crazed, uniformed zealot, but ". You're giving the Linux crazies a real run for their money.

    6. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I'm afraid I'm one of the Linux crazies.

      Furthermore, I think NetBSD's (and OpenBSD's) UVM zero-copy features are positively uttergloss. I wish Linux was poised to offer anything even close. There's no way, though, that Linux will have them before 2.8 or 3.0, in two to five years.

      Making libstdc++ able to use those features transparently, once they do appear, should hasten their arrival. There's nothing like the prospect of making dozens (or hundreds) of existing programs several times faster on millions of machines to inspire kernel improvements. Having them already demonstrably running faster on a competing OS helps too.

      First, of course, we have to get those dozens (or hundreds) of kernel-optimization-ready programs deployed, which means making the improvements and getting a release that has them out into the world. Fortunately the improvements are an optimization even without UVM or its imagined Linux equivalent, because they will speed up disk file I/O operations too.

    7. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by vesamies · · Score: 1

      I'm quite happy with the new GCC. It's a big improvement over the old 2.95 version. Btw, it's easy to build a system with the new GCC, running fine here, although my kernel is still built with 2.95.

    8. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      In the final analysis only one fact remains:
      *BSD is dead
    9. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      In the final analysis but one fact remains:
      *BSD is dead
    10. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      *BSD is dying.
    11. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > *BSD is dead

      Why is that?

    12. Re:Waiting for 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Woohoo!! A BSD licensed alternative to gcc.

  2. NetBSD by kernelistic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's nice to see NetBSD updating their compiler suite to something newer. Compiling and testing for so many archs and procs is quite an undertaking!

  3. Re:Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by beefdart · · Score: 1

    Holy CRAP! I have never seen this before!!

    I guess its time to go to work and quickly migrate our 350 production FreeBSD machines to something not dead...

    Thank you so much for telling me, all this time I thought I was using the fastest, most stable OS for x86, but it turns out a fat-gay penguin must have stomped on my OS.

    Choke on it and die you Linux-Halfwit.

  4. Re:*BSD is dying by beefdart · · Score: 1

    Holy CRAP! I have never seen this before!! I guess its time to go to work and quickly migrate our 350 production FreeBSD machines to something not dead... Thank you so much for telling me, all this time I thought I was using the fastest, most stable OS for x86, but it turns out a fat-gay penguin must have stomped on my OS. Choke on it and die you Linux-Halfwit.

  5. Re:Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Phactorial · · Score: 1

    s/fastest//

  6. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all, a big if, it could only be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  7. special message to BSD fans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    You BSD people and your homosexual "lifestyles" make me sick.

    Maybe you are to busy worshiping your BSD devil to have a clue. But hey, no matter how often you bow down to the BSD devil, you can't get away from God's holy power.

    BSD people, with His help you can be cured. Stop the devil idolatry. Stop the boy-man "love". And don't forget, that God created Adam and Eve, NOT Adam and Steve. If you don't like it, well that is too darn bad because it is His world not yours. He makes the rules, not you.

  8. Girl snags weird two-footed horned fish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    SEATTLE - A Federal Way, Wash., girl on a fishing trip with her family reeled in something right out of a science fiction film. Believe it or not, she caught a two-footed fish with a big horn.

    8-year-old Otilia Grasan was fishing with her family this week when she caught the strangest fish she had ever seen.

    "I was thinking that it might be a good pet and put it in the fish tank," said Otilia. "When it came up in the water the eyes were really glowing and the whole tail was glowing too. So I thought it was gonna glow in the dark." Fresh from the family freezer, Otilia showed off her catch, an odd looking fish about 18 inches long.

    You'd think a two-footed fish with a big, weird horn would be a rare discovery, but the truth is there are actually thousands of them in Puget Sound.

    Turns out the mysterious creature is a distant member of the shark family with a decidedly unglamorous name.

    "Yeah, this is the spotted ratfish," said Wayne Palsson, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

    The so-called "feet" are actually modified fins used to latch onto females, helping big ratfish make little ratfish. The same goes for that handsome horn.

    And while many crave crab legs and buffalo wings, if someone offers you some fresh caught "fish feet," keep walking. Health officials say ratfish is poisonous and should not be eaten.

  9. Hard Times for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

    The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

  10. Re:it's DEAD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This BSD bitch is dead. Stick a fork in it.

  11. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    While it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take:
    • deal with the inevitable.
    • grieve for your loss.
    • move on.
    Never let your emotions get tangled up with something as silly as a computer
    operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop; deal with it and move on.
  12. Re:Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hmmm, sounds like what happened to the american political system