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GCC-2.95 in July
Bananenrepublik writes "On this page, the EGCS steering committee has posted the official schedule for the transition from egcs to gcc-2.95. So expect gcc-2.95 in early July. " It looks pretty aggressive. I wish the team luck, and eagerly await the improved compiler.
For one thing, egcs sold out and started using that damn -linux-gnu stuff. For shame!
Are they adopting the egcs development model or just the code?
I hate to say it, but one thing VC++ seems to do better than the (GNU)/Linux environment is link smaller static binaries. It seems better at including only what is necessary, while my gnu environment generates much larger binaries (even with -O and not -g).
Yeah, dynamic binaries are nice and tight, but VC++ has proven that the static binaries could be better.
I am not a compiler guru, so maybe i shouldnt be blabbing, but I am just reporting what I see.
I always strip if I am not in debugging cycle. If I am debugging I of course do not strip so as to keep my symbol info.
$ cat > foo.c #include ./foo ./foo /usr/lib/libc.a
> int main(int argc, char *argv[])
> {
> printf("Hello, foo\n");
> return 0;
> }
> EOF
$ egcs -c foo.c
$ egcs -o foo foo.o
$
Hello, foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 11697 May 16 14:36 foo
$ egcs -o foo foo.o -static
$
Hello, foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 909297 May 16 14:37 foo
$ strip foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 210388 May 16 14:37 foo
$ strip -o libc.a
$ ls -al libc.a
-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me 1405908 May 16 14:43 libc.a
It obviously is doing something, otherwise how can it cram a 1.4MB C library into 210KB?
$ cat > foo.c <<EOF ./foo ./foo /usr/lib/libc.a
> #include <stdio.h>
> int main(int argc, char *argv[])
> {
> printf("Hello, foo\n");
> return 0;
> }
> EOF
$ egcs -c foo.c
$ egcs -o foo foo.o
$
Hello, foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 11697 May 16 14:36 foo
$ egcs -o foo foo.o -static
$
Hello, foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 909297 May 16 14:37 foo
$ strip foo
$ ls -al foo
-rwxrwxr-x 1 me me 210388 May 16 14:37 foo
$ strip -o libc.a
$ ls -al libc.a
-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me 1405908 May 16 14:43 libc.a
It obviously is doing something, otherwise how can it cram a 1.4MB C library into 210KB?
This kind of response is very aggravating. This is a very M$ mindset. If you cant conceive of a reason then there just must not be one.
Read about thick binaries. Do you want Linux to go there? Embedded applications. Real-time single purpose computers. Easy end-user installs. The list goes on.
The main one I have noticed was that they managed to break some system DLLs like MSVCRT.DLL.
Mind you, the breakage (changes in the behavior of malloc/free) is very similar to the malloc/netscape/libc-5.3.12 problems encountered on Linux a couple of years ago. However, apparently it actually broke a couple of Microsoft programs as well (I read something about IIS on NT/Alpha failing after installation of VC++ 6.0).
MSVC++ 6.0 SP2 seems to fix that problem, as well as some other ones (like using cut-and-paste while debugging crashes the debugger).
Thankfully MS still ships NMAKE, so I can use Emacs, write some simple Makefiles, and get some work done.
Changing the name of egcs
back to gcc is a mistake.
After all there is more to it than
GNU C Compiler.
Included is support for C,C++,Objective-c,Fortran and soon Java.
egcs(Extended GNU compiler system??) is more
appropriate.
gcs would be fine as well.
It only takes a 1-line perl or sed script to
fix that crap. I'll guess awk can handle it too.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6552/ compila.html
there is no logical reason why gcc cannot implement VC++'s strength(s). We know it can be done so why is there such a tendency to justify the current state instead of trying to acheive more. I am all for Open Source, but this little ditty on gcc vs. VC++ is somehow deeply disturbing. The predominate response from 'our' open source crowd on this issue is somewhat microsoft FUDish.
C++ hello world linked with a bunch of unused libraries (optimized and striped): 331372 k
C++ hello world linked with just libc: 3296 k
Evidently, there IS a significant issue here.
Is there an easy way to compile on linux? (For example, is there an nmake for linux?)
I want to thank Cygnus for all the help they put into EGCS! I also wanted to say that Source-Navigator is one of the best development tools out there except for not supporting PERL. If the Cygnus Source-Navigator ever did for keeping track of Perl Modules what it does for keeping track of C header files then it would be unstoppable in the web development market.
Why don't you use the CygWin port (it includes egcs) for Win32? IMHO it makes matters easier, e.g. you can use the usual bunch of construction tools like autoconf, GNU make, textutils etc
Regards,
Marc
If gcc(the package) stands for GNU Compiler Collection, does that mean that when I type in gcc, that I am running the whole collection?
Probably not.
gcc(the compiler) still would stand for
GNU C compiler.
I think gcs is probabably the best name
for the whole set of compilers.
It avoids the obvious name collision.
Strip only removes symbols. This sounds like there is unnecessary object code being included.
The current EGCS snapshots have some support for the new C standard ( C9X) . But well... it is just a beginning and a lot of basic C9X features are missing (the Glibc2.1 misses many C9X functions, too, especially with wide chars concerns) . I hope GCC 2.95 will finally have all the features of the final comitee draft. As that standard will soon officially replace the current C language definition, GCC have to follow it. Having a decent C9X compiler on Linux is the best way of learning properly the new C language revision.
(1) If there is something called "Cygnus Inc" it has nothing to do with Gcc. The name you are looking for is "Cygnus Solutions". If you want to be informal, you can say "Cygnus" - but don't add "Inc"; if you add "Inc", get the name right. (While "Cygnus Solutions" is looking for a new company name, I don't think one has been chosen yet.)
(2) Cygnus is *not* the maintainer of Gcc. The maintainer of Gcc is the Egcs steering committee. The steering committee contains individuals, but no companies are members. Some of the steering committee members are Cygnus employees, including the technical manager (I forget his official title), Jeff Law. Other members belong to other organizations.
While this is not an official statement, I am a member of the Egcs steering committee, and (until next Wednesday) a Cygnus employee.
I believe it is important to clear up a few issues
that have come up on this thread:
1. It's Cygnus Solutions, not Cygnus Inc. At
least until our name is changed.
2. Cygnus contributes to egcs, but does not
control egcs. egcs is controlled by the
egcs steering committee which includes
people from a variety of different backgrounds.
http://egcs.cygnus.com/steering.html
It is important to realize that while Cygnus
does have representation on the egcs steering
committee, it does not have a majority on the
egcs steering committee.
3. The egcs project was already in the process of
putting a release together. It was originally
to be called egcs-1.2. However with the
egcs/fsf merger we decided to rename the
release gcc-2.95. So July may not be as
aggressive as one might think.
4. The development model of egcs is not changing.
Some changes will be necessary as part of the
egcs/fsf merger, but the basic development
model used by egcs will not be changing.
Jeff Law
Cygnus Solutions
egcs project
I think they made it quite a bit stricter on some inline asm things, which broke some parts of the kernel. pre-2.2 kernels has "DO NOT COMPILE WITH EGCS" all over em or something :)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I could be wrong, but doesn't 'strip' just take out debugging information? I don't think it takes out unused functions/variables. That's called 'smart linking'. Borland's DOS compilers have had them for AGES. Why doesn't the GNU linker???
When is libstdc++ going to implement ostringstream??? I'm getting tired of using ostrstream...
(Sorry if this posts twice, I hit the return by accident)
I was wondering if anyone knows where there is a good overview of the *nix C++ compiler variants and their implementations of the standard. I haven't had much time to keep up with the latest and greatest compiler versions, and am now woefully out of date.
Any help is appreciated.
-Tim
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I think that you meant 331372 bytes and 3296 bytes.
Take a look at
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~ja fl/jx/egcs_complain.html
John_Chalisque
I was wondering if someone could clarify a few points for me about PGCC, EGCS soon to be GCC-2.9.....
1) What is the connection between PGCC and EGCS. I know that PGCC is based on the EGCS code and that the improvements from PGCC are rolled back into the EGCS code base, but how do the two compare on producing optimized code for Pentium/PentiumII machines. Does PGCC have code that doesn't go back into EGCS or does, for example, EGCS 1.1.2 have all the improvements from PGCC 1.1.1 in it?
2) Has anybody done any basic benchmarking of the two ??
If anybody has any answers... then please enlighten me
P.S Yes, i know this isn't a mailing list or bulletin board, and the questions are slightly off topic, but please indulge me !!!
Iggy
That's autoconf, not egcs.
Try strip -s
EGCS put gcc on speed :-)
what sort of awful thing did egcs do to gcc?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Ever use the strip command on that static binary?
Hi, I'm the coordinator of the Free Trek project (see web site above) and our game is portable betwen Linux and Windows (and Solaris and other UNIX too with little trouble).
I use MSVC++ 6.0 for the Windows port, but wish I didn't have to. If you need to use the Standard Template Library, you're only hope to compile is to get STLPort (www.stlport.org) and cross your fingers. Debugging that crap is horrible because the error messages are completely un-helpful.
Microsoft has a long way to go before their development tools are enterprise ready.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
If that's a "transgression", uh, well, I don't quite know what to say.
Hopefully, within a few years, somebody will implement the f*cking standard, especially WRT templates.
We need an industry-wide organization to require vendors to prominently display the following information:
"Our Fucking Compiler is Broken in the Following Ways:
Like, truth in advertising or something.
If I may go charging blindly off-topic, does anybody know offhand how badly broken MSVC 6 is with templates? v5 is a mess, but I'm hoping that with 6 they took a break from adding useless bells'n'whistles to the IDE (and removing useful ones from the help system), and put a couple of guys on fixing the compiler for a week or so. We don't have v6 at work because we don't use templates that much, and we're too busy to "take advantage of productivity features". I mean, "productivity" is great if you've got a lot of time on your hands, but we have to ship stuff so we just write code instead. We've already got our hands full avoiding the "productivity features" in v5. The last thing we need is more of them.
v5 seems to have a few quirks with resolving overloaded functions in derived classes, too. Or maybe it was my own error, mixing overloads and virtuals. Aarrgghh.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I use MSVC++ 6.0 for the Windows port, but wish I didn't have to. If you need to use the Standard Template Library, you're only hope to compile . .
Oh, lord. Is it that their STL implementation (Dinkum?) is broken, or the compiler's template implementation breaks a good STL implementation, or is it just incompatible with older versions? I can't think offhand of any MSVC 5 template problems that require you to write code that would break in a good implementation, but I'm far from an expert on templates.
I seem to recall reading that the ANSI STL differs enough from previous versions to be a problem -- or in other words, we're in a transitional period when the Standard (capital 'S') is non-standard (small 's'). So to speak.
Damn, I use the STL a lot. I don't do anything arcane or clever with it, but I do use it.
Microsoft has a long way to go before their development tools are enterprise ready.
:)
Unfortunately, they don't often seem to be going in the right direction. I read an intervew with the guy in charge of that project. He's a total pod person. Nine out of ten of his answers mentioned either "innovation" or "all the great features of Windows". I mean, verbatim, "all the great features of Windows", that exact phrase, over and over. He also thought that portability was a waste of time, because most developers only have one computer on their desks anyway (maybe that's not precisely what he meant, but it looked like that was what he was getting at and I was too horrified by then to pay close attention). Like all things that Microsoft people say, it made me unspeakably depressed for several days after reading it.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
The main one I have noticed was that they managed to break some system DLLs like MSVCRT.DLL.
Um, yeah, I may have heard something like that . . . Or maybe i heard about an entirely different instance of them breaking system dll's.
the breakage (changes in the behavior of malloc/free)
What kind of changes?
MSVC++ 6.0 SP2 seems to fix that problem . .
What SP are they up to by now? IIRC SP2 was this winter, for a product released around October or something. Wow.
using cut-and-paste while debugging crashes the debugger
To be fair, that's just the IDE, not the compiler -- but it's still hilarious. MSVC6 is supposed to let you edit and recompile on the fly while debugging, isn't it? That almost sounds useful.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Um, what don't you like about gcc?
What do you like about MSVC?
Failing that, can you at least name some things which in your opinion might make one compiler better than another?
I mean, I've used both and for most of my purposes I don't see much difference, except that cl.exe knows to name the executable after the file with main() in it, but with gcc I have to tell it "-o exename". I hope you don't think that's a major issue. Innocent and poetic soul that I am, I don't pay much attention to the size of the executables these things barf up.
Or are you just rattling people's cages? If so, you can do better, I'm sure. Try gun control. That's always a good one. Here's an example:
"GCC was obviously designed by a whining, socialist liberal gun-control advocate. That's why it doesn't support namespaces: Because the liberals want to force us all to live together and be equal."
:)
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Why don't you use the CygWin port (it includes egcs) for Win32?
Mmm, yeah, egcs does namespaces, which mingw32 (or at least the version I have) does not.
mingw32, if you haven't run into it, is yet another win32 port, which uses the MS c runtime which comes with windows. I don't have the URL handy. Last I looked at the page (months ago) there was some kind of talk there about folding egcs into it.
Anyhow, I do have cygwin at work, but I haven't bothered at home (the difference is the T1
But why do I still use MSVC for my own stuff? Well, I like to make sure things are portable. I try to make everything compile with both gcc and MSVC. I also like MSVC's text editor. I just do, deal with it
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --