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GCC 4.9 Coming With Big New Features

Posted by timothy on from the holy-linkage-batman dept.

jones_supa writes "When GCC 4.9 is released in 2014 it will be coming in hot on new features with a large assortment of improvements and new functionality for the open-source compiler. Phoronix provides a recap of some of the really great features of this next major compiler release from the Free Software Foundation. For a quick list: OpenMP 4.0, Intel Cilk Plus multi-threading support, Intel Bay Trail and Silvermont support, NDS32 port, Undefined Behavior Sanitizer, Address Sanitizer, ADA and Fortran updates, improved C11 / C++11 / C++14, better x86 intrinsics, refined diagnostics output. Bubbling under are still: Bulldozer 4 / Excavator support, OpenACC, JIT compiler, disabling Java by default."

12 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. A big improvement indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    New in this release: lots of stuff most people don't care about, some minor improvements and oh yeah we gave up on Java.

    1. Re:A big improvement indeed by cduffy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You only don't care about sanitizing standard-undefined behavior if you don't care about bugs.

      That one's a Really, Really Big Deal.

    2. Re:A big improvement indeed by Hizonner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I assume you can list all the undefined behaviors in the C standard off the top of your head, yes? And you've never actually written a line of code with an error in it, right?

      I've spent a lot of time cleaning up after security bugs written by people with that attitude. None of them could make mistakes either. Maybe you guys should form a club, so the rest of us can identify the special beings walking among us.

  2. Can we please stop mass-linking Phoronix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For God's sake, that's *THIRTEEN* (13) links to Phoronix!
    Pointing to a couple of ML threads or to the 4.9 changelog would've been more than enough. http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.9/changes.html

  3. Looks like they are porting Clang features... by gnasher719 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The whole article really reads quite fanboyish / alternatively GCC has hired a marketing department. But it looks really lame when you talk about exiting new features, and you just copied what Clang had before.

    1. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Superior backend, coming up to par with Clang on the frontend, what's not to love?

      Frankly, the BSD licenses appear to be a failure psychologically. The proponents of BSD-licensed software go apeshit when GPL-licensed software reuses their code, but are ok if the stuff disappears in proprietary forks.

      You can see this, for example, with LibreOffice/OpenOffice: every LibreOffice release announcement draws ire from the OpenOffice crowd (well, particularly one OpenOffice developer) because the latter feels their code has been ripped off.

      There has been a lot of that going on with OpenBSD and FreeBSD as well, but it's grown a bit more quiet in recent years.

      Now we have the same with Clang/GCC.

      If you don't want to have your code relicensed under different licenses, use a Copyleft license. If you want to have your code relicensed under different licenses, stop complaining when somebody actually does exactly that.

    2. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by mvdwege · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wait, what, Clang now supports other languages than C-derivatives, like Ada and Fortran?

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    3. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by DuckDodgers · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are re-stating the original argument about free software that has been done to death on the internet.

      To the BSD folks, they want to write software that is free as in free beer. You can take it, and do whatever you want with it. Drink it, dump it in the trash, give it to your friends, sell it. Free as in Freedom of the user

      To the GPL or Free Software Foundation folks, they want to write software that is free as in free speech. You can copy it, and distribute it, but you can't restrict other people's rights to copy it and distribute it. Just like I can't hand out a copy of the US Constitution or a speech by Abraham Lincoln and forbid other people from sharing it or publishing a copy. Free as in Freedom of the software

      You may prefer the BSD way, and that's fine, but "who isn't a zealot" is out of line. Having a different set of priorities does not make one a dick. Blatantly copying code under one license to the other is a dickish move, but re-engineering from one to the other is perfectly legitimate. And yes, I'm in the FSF camp.

    4. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      To the GPL or Free Software Foundation folks, they want to write software that is free as in free speech. You can copy it, and distribute it, but you can't restrict other people's rights to copy it and distribute it.

      Uhm, the entire point of GPL is that you can restrict others right to copy it and distribute it.

    5. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by gnasher719 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To the GPL or Free Software Foundation folks, they want to write software that is free as in free speech. You can copy it, and distribute it, but you can't restrict other people's rights to copy it and distribute it. Just like I can't hand out a copy of the US Constitution or a speech by Abraham Lincoln and forbid other people from sharing it or publishing a copy. Free as in Freedom of the software

      Yes, there is always the "free as in free speech" high horse, but the fact is that (a) you can't legally use GPL licensed code in a BSD project, and (b) when licensed code is moved to a BSD project and modified, you can't legally move the changes back to the BSD project.

      So these people's view of "free" is something that I can only call perverted.

    6. Re:Looks like they are porting Clang features... by Wootery · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The 2-clause BSD license (which is the one used nowadays) is 7 lines of natural English (excluding the disclaimer) and people still can't understand it...

      You can't take BSD code and change it's license.

      It's ironic that you're laughing at those who misunderstand the licence, given that you've fundamentally midunderstood the licence.

      If your interpretation were correct, it would be functionally comparable to the GPL, and we wouldn't have all those flame-wars.

      It's a 'copycenter' licence, not a copyleft licence. You're allowed to release your fork under your choice of licence, whether proprietary, Free/Open Source, or anywhere in between, provided you don't hide the fact that your software is based upon that original BSD 2-clause licensed software.

      It's a little confusing, as "must retain the above copyright notice" can easily be misinterpreted the way you did, to mean "you must release your fork under the BSD 2-clause licence".

      Relevant Wikipedia content.

  4. But but Google? by iYk6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But then how would Googlebot know that Phoronix is really great and popular and they should rank it higher in searches?