GCC 3.3 Update for Mac OS X Available

snowtigger writes "The August 2003 GCC updater includes the new GCC 3.3 compiler in addition to other updates that will allow development of G5 optimized code with the December 2002 Mac OS X Developer Tools. This update is available to all ADC members from the Download Software area of the ADC web site (free registration required). It will be interesting to see what Steve Jobs will present in Paris tomorrow; is XCode ready?"

Comments

We'll find out in a couple of hours.

[so1omon]

The keynote starts at 1 AM Pacific time...

Re:We'll find out in a couple of hours.

[hype7]

there's going to be at least one of Steve's "oh, and one more thing" surprises:

http://99mac.com/nyhetsbilder/appleexpo2003/

In my experience stuff like that has only been covered up for new hardware...

-- james

Re:We'll find out in a couple of hours.

[mallie_mcg]

Tis the new Powerbook 15".

One of my friends just ordered one of these puppies, the manager of the store down here in .AU could give him price, and order it, but was not able to give specs. (WTF?!!?!) So this MUST be the one more thing, its gotta be swoit!

Binary compatibility

[Henry V .009]

I take it that GCC for Mac OS X has the same binary compatibility problems that it does for Intel architectures. What competing compilers are out there at the moment? How do they stack up against GCC speed-wise? Does any ensure binary compatibility?

Re:Binary compatibility

[Lally Singh]

The ABI is Mach-O or CFM. They both work on OS X. GCC uses it, Codewarrior uses it, the IBM XL compilers use it. Codewarrior also beats gcc in speed & quality of code like an abusive sibling*. Donno about the IBM compilers, but I assume they provide an even more severe beating.

* That was going to be a much more offensive analogy...

Re:Binary compatibility

[BlackFingolfin]

Sorry to say but you are talking complete nonsense.

First off, this was about the C++ ABI used by GCC, which indeed changed (again!) between GCC 3.1 and 3.3, meaning that C++ code is incompatbile between those versions.

Next, Mach-O and CFM are binary executable formats, which is a whole other story. Besides, you make it sound as if they were the same, when in fact they are not. They are two very different formats. CFM is the one used traditonally, the only one supported by classic MacOS. Max OS X also supports it, and in fact if you want your Carbon programs to run both on OS 9 and OS X, you have to supply them in CFM. However, GCC is *not* able of outputting CFM. The only C/C++ compiler running on OS X which support this is (AFAIK) MetroWerks CodeWarrior.

Mach-O is the binary format of choice for anything else which only runs on OS X, and it's the only format GCC and the IBM XL compiler support (on OS X, that is).

Re:Binary compatibility

[Lally Singh]

It's not complete nonsense :-P

The ABI that matters is for C on OS X. Carbon uses it. Even Objective-C & Cocoa use it (the calls are mapped to a C call).

As for C++ ABI... I'm asking someone who knows :-) bbl.

Re:Binary compatibility

[Lally Singh]

CFM & Mach-O are the OS 9 & OS X binary executable formats. They can be as different as they want internally, but they're serving the same purpose. I think we're in agreement here.

My point was that the C ABI is standard atop of these, and that that's the ABI that's most important. I'll post when I get the right info on the C++ ABI compatibility...

CHUD

[Pathwalker]

The GCC update has been out for a while, but it looks like last week Apple updated CHUD (the Computer Hardware Understanding Development toolkit) to version 3.0.

It lets you tweak configuration registers in almost all parts of the system, gather and graph lots of profile information (instruction mix, cache stalls, etc...) from programs, and lots of other cool things.

Re:CHUD

[andrewski]

Apple's kind of like the aunt who smoked a J with you when you were 17. They're cool like that.

Re:CHUD

[Anonymous Coward]

You've made a mistake. CHUD is Cannabalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0087015/

:)

Re:CHUD

[Wesley Felter]

Heh, CHUD will let you do anything except overclock your iBook.

Fink

[therevolution]

Fink users: see this annoucement from the Fink developers regarding GCC 3.3 . It is probably a good idea to hold off on installing 3.3 until they add support for it.

Re:Fink

[reiggin]

Too late. How do I uninstall gcc 3.3, without uninstalling the entire Developer Tools?

Btw, it's been out for about a week.

Re:Fink

[therevolution]

Beats me. That announcement I linked to says to run "sudo gcc_select 3" before running Fink as a workaround... but they still don't promise everything will work. I don't know, it's a fairly old announcement now... maybe things have changed since? I don't know... try it and see what happens, I guess.

Re:Fink

[jweatherley]

The old compilers are still there. Take a look in /usr/bin and you will see them:

bash-2.05a$ ls /usr/bin/gc*
/usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc2 /usr/bin/gcc-3.3
/usr/bin/gcc3

gcc is a symlink to whatever compliler you are currently using - so to go back to v3.1 just point it to gcc3. Similar stuff applies for g++.

Also Project Builder doesn't know about gcc3.3 without changing some of the compile options and will default to gcc2.95 so it is important to RTFM before updating!

Re:Fink

[transient]

Don't go messing with those symlinks unless you know what you're doing. Apple provides a tool called gcc_select for this purpose. If you run "gcc_select -n 2" it will show you what commands it runs to select GCC 2, and there are 60 of them. Not something you want to do by hand.

There's no man page for gcc_select (not on my Mac anyway) but "gcc_select -h" will get you some brief help.

Re:Fink

[babbage]

They may have fixed this by now -- I did a CVS update over the weekend, and got a new gcc-3.3 tree in my CVS repository:

% ls /sw/fink/10.*
/sw/fink/10.2:
CVS
local
stable
unstable

/sw/fink/10.2-gcc3.3:
CVS
stable
unstable

/sw/fink/10.3:
CVS
IDEAS

If you installed the GCC3.3 update before learning about the warning, try doing a CVS update for Fink with `sudo fink -y selfupdate` (or maybe `sudo fink -y selfupdate-cvs`, depending on options you may have selected in the past). This may force you to start rebuilding much [all?] installed software based on the GCC3.3 updated versions, provided that those versions are available yet.

This may get you by until an announcement comes along on the Fink news page.

Re:Fink

[WatertonMan]

One thing about Fink. It is very sensitive to changes in development tools. I upgraded Perl from 5.6 to 5.8 and have had no end of troubles ever since. I finally got Fink Commander working (after a few months) but last week I tried to run update-all and one package is screwed up because of confusion over Perl versions. I halfway suspect that they are holding off on a lot of things until Panther is out, given how that will usher in a lot of changes/unifications with how general Unix stuff is installed. (I halfway wish they include xlc as an option as well -- it is for mathematical applications much faster)

Re:Fink

[xluserpetex]

there aren't many ports in the gcc-3.3 tree yet, but once there are i think they'll make an announcement.

Re:Fink

[JDWTopGuy]

Part of the reason I plan to do a fresh-install once I go Panther. Unless of course I get a job and can buy a new PowerBook with Panther on it.

Panther and/or Powerbooks

[MalleusEBHC]

I doubt Apple will release XCode separate from Panther. However, I would not be surprised in the least to hear that Panther is released in but a few short hours. At the very worst, I expect Steve to finally announce a specific date for Panther's release.

On the other hand, the question of what we will hear (if anything) about the Powerbooks is beyond my ability to prognosticate. On one hand, I think that they *must* finally be coming out. I mean, it's the year of the laptop and we haven't seen anything since January. However, reportedly the holdup has been because of Motorola's inability to produce the 7457 in quantity, in which case you can never be sure how long they will drag their feet.

Re:Panther and/or Powerbooks

[oscarmv]

It still needs some polishing, as far as I can tell.

I think it's very likely though that Jobs will announce a definite release date.

Re:Panther and/or Powerbooks

[TheRaven64]

I just ordered a 15" powerbook. I asked two questions:

1. Is it worth waiting for new PowerBooks (i.e. are there going to be new ones released at Paris)?
2. Is it worth waiting for Panther?

The answer to the first question was `We never comment on products until they have been anounced. If, hypothetically speaking, new ones were to be announced by Steve in his keynote next week [this was last week] then we would automatically upgrade your order to the new model'.

The answer to question two was `Don't expect to see Panther before Christmas, or maybe early next year'.

IBM Compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has also released their own cc compiler's for use with the g5 which are supposed to be faster than gcc. They even give instructions as to how to incorporate into project builder and Xcode if I remember. Anyone tried this?

Re:IBM Compilers

[proj_2501]

anyone looking for the IBM XL C and XL C++ compiler beta can look here

i doubt this will remain free. better snag it now!

Re:C# in X-code

[stu_coates]

I'm similarly disgusted at the omission of BrainFuck... come on Apple, what are you playing at? We developers demand support for more languages.

Silly question:

[sdimbert]

I'm an experienced Mac User and I'm comfortable in *nix. Nontheless, I still don't understand why, as a user of applications, I would want the GCC. I feel like this is a question lots of people want the answer to. Anyone want to take a crack?

Re:Silly question:

[noselasd]

You won't need gcc, what made you think that ?

Re:Silly question:

[babbage]

GCC is for compiling software from raw source code. If you're downloading open source software, you generally need a compiler to install it, because the software frequently isn't distributed in an executable form. Even if an executable form is available, most open source projects don't have the resources to provide version for every esoteric configuration people might be using (like, say, OSX -- most of this stuff is written for Linux after all, so OSX is a bit "exotic" from the average Linux developer's point of view).

If you're not developing software and you don't intend to install open source software from raw source, then you don't need a compiler.

Re:C# in X-code

[WasterDave]

Heh! Where *are* my mod points when I need them :)

Dave

Fink does not like the 3.3 compiler...

[Domini]

From the Fink site:


2003-06-26: Developer Tools Update.

Quick Summary: DO NOT INSTALL THIS UPDATE.

Apple has released a patch to the December 2002 Developer Tools which includes gcc 3.3, their new compiler.

Fink does not yet support compiling with gcc 3.3. In addition, it is important not to "mix and match" between compilers: all C++ code in fink packages needs to be compiled with the same compiler.

For this reason, the Fink team recommends that if you update your Developer Tools with the new patch, you should be careful to run sudo gcc_select 3 prior to any "fink build" or "fink install" commands.

would the REAL gcc 3.3 please stand up?

[agentk]

OK, does anyone have any real information on this supposed 3.3 version? The *last* time the released a so-called "3.3" version of GCC (April/June), I discovered after WEEKS of frustration that it was really just some 3.2 CVS snapshot from last February, and was no better really than the 3.2 version

I am grateful that a free compiler is available for my Mac but that was annoying.

So is this REALLY gcc 3.3? Can someone who has installed it please run "gcc-3.3 -v" and post the output?

Thanks!

reed

Re:would the REAL gcc 3.3 please stand up?

[jweatherley]

bash-2.05a$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/3.3/specs
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1435)
bash-2.05a$

Re:would the REAL gcc 3.3 please stand up?

[siddhartha03]

[Minerva:~] eman% gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1435)
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

It works as advertised.

It's _very_ fast too.

I want xcode!

[Ark42]

I just bought my first Mac off of ebay (G4/450/256M/10G/DVD/ZIP/keyboard/stupid puck mouse/17" monitor). I've been programming under Linux and Windows forever, and plan to start programming for OSX now too. I am really looking forward to OSX 10.3 and the final Xcode. Any veteran Mac programmers want to help me learn this stuff :)

Re:I want xcode!

[Maserati]

O'Reilly's MacDev center

CocoaDev.com

Both have entry-level ProjectBuilder tutorials, including the famous one-line web browser (CocoaDev) and text editor (O'Reilly) tutorials.

I would like to see GCC be a standard component

[spitzak]

Imaging end-user software that is able to call a compiler- the software could compile some arrangement/setup/instructions from the user into an extremely fast executing part and load it using dload and execute it. Everything would be invisible to the user but the result could be very fast execution of stuff (with an annoying start-up delay, admittedly). For instance imagine Photoshop where your custom brushes or filters are actually compiled code somehow.

This could be the killer app, actually!

In addition it makes it possible to do user-friendly installs of source code by having the installation program run the compiler, thus resulting in programs that are optimized for your machine, and installations that are cross-platform.

Re:I would like to see GCC be a standard component

[babbage]

No exactly what you're talking about, but don't a lot of dynamic languages allow you to do this sort of thing already?

I thought one of the Big Win features of Common Lisp was the ability to dynamically generate & run code on the fly, which is basically what you're talking about.

Likewise, Perl & Python let you do similar things with the eval amd lambda functions -- build up a data structure or code block, store it in a variable then eval{...} it as you go.

Granted, there's no compilation in the C/C++ sense with Perl & Python, so no external software is needed. I gather the same is true with CL, but I've never used that language. Still, it seems like there are ways to do what you're describing, and they allow programmers to pull off some interesting things sometimes. It sounds like you may want to read up on functional programming :-)

Here's the REAL answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dec2002gccUpdater.pkg update:

% gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/3.3/specs
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1435)

The NEW August2003gccUpdater.pkg update:

% gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/3.3/specs
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1493)

Re:Here's the REAL answer.

[agentk]

Yeah, no one reads articles -- let alone moderates them -- on slashdot older than about an hour I'm afraid.

Thanks to the AC for the "REAL answer". My guess then is that it adds some special Apple features, but still has all the same C++ bugs as 3.2 (and Dec02 "3.3") since it's not based on any real 3.3 releases (first one was in May; this one still has the February date).

reed

developer.apple.com

[cmholm]

What? You asking for Father "Randy" Pudge to supervise you? Seriously, if you need a starting place for technical info, surf to the Apple Developer Connection and sign up. The basic membership is free, and gives you access to the downloads and all documentation. There are plenty of tutorials to get you going.

Re:developer.apple.com

[Ark42]

I already signed up for that, but I can only put some much effort into learning how to use and program for OSX, since 90%+ of my sales will definately still be the windows version. I see it more as myself doing a favor for the Mac community by even trying to create a Mac version of my software.

Meaning of new options?

[Brad Lucier]

Anyone know what these options mean? They are mentioned as being turned on by the new -fast option, but they seem to be Apple-specific and don't appear in the documentation file://Developer/Documentation/DeveloperTools/gcc- 3.3/gcc/index.html

-frelax-aliasing
-fgcse-mem-alias
-floop-transpose
-floop-to-memset
-fload-after-store
-fgcse-loop-depth
-fdisable-typechecking-for-spec

That last one sounds like a good one ;-), but I'm wondering if it can screw up my programs that might rely on stricter semantics, so I'd like to know what it does.

Re:Meaning of new options?

[proj_2501]

it all adds up to:

-fwork-dammit

Re:Meaning of new options?

[Brad Lucier]

Mike Stump at Apple helped me find the answers. There is little real documentation, the documentation is in the CVS sources for the compilers, and you have to download more than one source tree to be able to figure out what's going on.

First, you need to find the versions of the compiler that Apple shipped. Second, there are two different versions depending on whether the -fast option is given or not: 1493 and 1610.

Then if you download the current sources (see file:///Developer/Documentation/DeveloperTools/gcc -3.3/gcc/Source-Code.html for instructions), you can find the precise cvs tags for builds 1493 and 1610 (fast) by searching the cvs status of version.c for 1610 and 1493. Now that you have the precise names, you can check-out the sources for these two branches. If you want to know what -frelax-aliasing does, for example, you grep for that in the 1610 sources, find it sets flag_relax_aliasing and grep for flag_relax_aliasing in the sources. Not perfect, but it works.

The one truly wierd thing is that what little documentation was written is not in either of these source versions, but in version gcc-1495 in the file AppleReleaseNotes.html in the main directory. Since you probably only want this one file from this CVS directory, you can get it separately.

That's all, folks!

Note added after trying to submit---what the hell's this lameness filter? Is technical information lame? To get this thing to actually be submitted, I had to take out all the commands you need to do to actually get this information.

Re:Meaning of new options?

[Valdrax]

So, for those of us who are incredibly lazy, what do all those compiler options do? You gotten me curious now (but not curious enough to go through the trouble of setting up CVS myself).

You want a Processor Upgrade!

[javaxman]

Seriously, it's well worth the money to get yourself a processor upgrade card given the machine you've just bought. I'm pretty sure you can upgrade to 800Mhz or 1GHz for a reasonable price. This is what has kept prices for these machines and Cubes so high. It'll more than double your performance considering the added cache, and that'll make a big difference if you're compiling. Also max out your RAM, it's cheap.

Rather than complain about the puck, dual-button+scrollwheel optical USB mice are super-cheap, get one.

Project Builder is already pretty damn sweet, and has been for some time. Try it out now, it'll make the transition to Xcode smoother for you.

Re:You want a Processor Upgrade!

[Ark42]

If I wanted a G5, I would have just bought it. I want a slow G4 so that I know if my program runs reasonably well on this, it should be even faster on better Macs. I may buy a 4th Intellimouse, I love those things, and its USB so whatever, it should work, but right now I'm just VNCing to it from my win2000 box anyway.
What I really need to find is some easy way to manage a program that compiles and runs well on OSX and Windows. Sure I could use GTK, but I know GTK apps look like ass on windows, so I probably won't. I hate MFC and stuff, but that obviously doesnt help OSX anyways.

Re:You want a Processor Upgrade!

[WatertonMan]

Reportedly Borland is coming out with a crossplatform version of their C++ Builder. It'll definitely have a Linux version but I've heard rumors of mixed things on the Mac version. Borland's always been rather lukewarm towards the Mac and their main strategy at the moment seems "survival by embracing Microsoft." (i.e. their .net strategy) So who knows if Mac support will actually make it.

One hopes it will since C++ Builder is, in certain ways, easier than learning Obj-C and trying to use Interface Builder.

Re:You want a Processor Upgrade!

[Jimithing DMB]

I suggest using wxWindows.

I started out with wxWindows to write version 2 of PhotoFlair (www.truview.com). I am now developing on my personal time a port for Cocoa known simply as wxCocoa. It is Mac OS X only.

In the meantime, there is a Mac Classic and Carbon port known as wxMac. Current CVS is dropping straight Classic support in favor of Carbon only. It will require Mac OS 9.1 or better.

Developing on a Mac is a great experience, though a nice fast Dual G4 or G5 is really a better system for that. I use a Dual G4-1Ghz at work. Still, I have a G4-500 at home and it's a respectable machine (using it now). Let's hope Isabel doesn't take it out.

If you don't want to jump right in to Mac development, go ahead and start with the Windows version written in wxWindows. You can even use your favorite IDE like Microsoft Visual Studio, or Borland. You can also use MinGW w/ MSYS and GVIM (my personal preference, though most people use MSVS or Borland I think).

Once you have a Windows version it will be easy to port to GTK or Mac OS. The port to Mac is a little rough for certain things, but overall is not bad. I hope to be making things easier for wxCocoa.

And you know what, even if you only use it to do MSW development, I think you'll still find it far better than MFC or raw Win32. :-)

AAAAIIIIIIGH!

[FredFnord]

Don't think you're the first person to think of this.

In fact, Oracle does this now, with lots of its products.

What does it mean? Well, every time the compiler is updated, their software install breaks. Every time the libraries change, their software install breaks. Every time you blink, their software install breaks.

Why not recommend that software makers ship their software with a big hammer. That way I can just hit myself over the head repeatedly, thus causing the same anguish, while at least letting the users I administrate for still USE the software.

-fred