Looking At Changes In the Newest GCC

cyberpead writes "With GCC 4 comes a new optimization framework (and new intermediate code representation), new target and language support, and a variety of new attributes and options. Get to know the major new features and their benefits in this article."

Comments

Umm, gcc 4 was released 2 years ago

[vlad_petric]

Granted, 4.3.2 is pretty cool, but AFAIK it's not revolutionary wrt earlier 4.* releases

Re:Umm, gcc 4 was released 2 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

But most developers still do not know the important differences between 4.x and 3.x other than the superficial ones like changes in headers that need to be included(ie stuff that breaks their code). For example, few seem to be aware that GCC does profile guided optimization now with -fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use switches(not even mentioned in the article).

Re:Umm, gcc 4 was released 2 years ago

[sxeraverx]

One of the things I personally am the most excited about is the ability to do function-level optimization in 4.4. Last year, I had a project that required me to have compiled code be as fast as possible, but you could only submit one source file and no Makefiles, which would be compiled with no arguments, optimizations, etc.. With this, I could throw the optimizations straight into the code, instead of having to compile with optimizations, taking the assembly, throwing that into a wrapper C file, and hoping the code was tested on the same architecture.

Re:Umm, gcc 4 was released 2 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been available since 2.95, about 8 years ago.

There have been lots of improvement on the use of that information since then, but the flags have existed for a long time

gcc 4 is "new"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it for a year and a half now.

Re:gcc 4 is "new"?

[TheRaven64]

The article is about 4.x, and covers everything including the latest 4.3.x series. It's very light on details, however, so unless you know next to nothing about GCC you are unlikely to learn anything.

Re:gcc 4 is "new"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be more logical to start supporting C++ 98 first?

Re:gcc 4 is "new"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That deserves "sad but true" rather than "funny"... VC supports C89, but nothing more recent.

Re:gcc 4 is "new"?

[XDirtypunkX]

As it has done since VC2003 thanks to the hard work of Herb Sutter? DUN DUN DUN.

Re:FINALLY

[pablomme]

Well up until today I haven't had a decent compiler for 95

Other than gfortran: g95, NAG's, PathScale's, Intel's, Absoft's, Sun's, Lahey's, Portland Group's, Compaq's...

For things other than PCs, there's IBM's, Cray's, Hitachi's, Fujitsu's...

You have no excuse! But please tell me it's not that you actually like Fortran 77... :)