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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] opera and gcc
  • Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:17:45 +0000 (UTC)

From ruario's blog and my.opera.com:

What the numbers mean - gcc3/4

The first major change: No more gcc295 packages, only gcc3 and gcc4. These
numbers refer to the GNU Compiler Collection
used to build the various packages. More specifically they refer to gcc
2.95, gcc 3.x and gcc 4.x. We included the
number in the package name as it gives a clue as to what version of a
distro we support with each package. We could
write it another way such as: modern (gcc4), old (gcc3) and ancient (295),
but the number is actually more useful as it
gives a more precise idea of what version of a distro is supported. If you
take your own distro you can find out what
version of gcc is provided by your distro vendor and this in turn will give
you are fairly good idea what package is
the right one for you. A great way to check this is actually to use
[33]distrowatch.com. On each distro specific page
it tells you which version of key software (including gcc) is included with
each version of the distro. Look up your
distro, then look up the version you use and note the gcc number. Now you
know if you need a gcc4, gcc3 or even gcc295
build!

Looking through these lists on distrowatch, plus Linux vendor sites and
support forums, it soon becomes clear why we
dropped gcc295. You can't find any currently supported distro that would
need gcc295. Indeed it is quite hard to find a
modern and vendor supported distro that actually uses gcc3 or lower. Damn
Small Linux is one of the few, though I
wouldn't be suprised if they move to a more recent version of gcc with the
next release. As such the effort we put in
to ensuring Opera can compile under gcc 2.95 simply isn't worth it anymore.
Our general rule of thumb is to support
popular distros for at least as long as the vendor or group that supports
that distro does. I have heard arguments from
users that they keep using old distros for pure speed and the ability to
run on very basic hardware, hence they need
the old builds. But to me this argument doesn't ring entirely true. It is
possible to run a small, fast distro, that is
also modern. A great demonstration of this is Puppy Linux or TinyCore but
equally something as modular as Arch can help
you strip away the fat leaving you with a lean, mean yet modern distro! And
more importantly you will be running
something that has received security updates!

Before moving on to the next topic, I wanted to give a further
clarification: any distro with at least gcc3.4.* will
actually work with the gcc4 builds. That is because the key change of files
we depend on actually changed at gcc3.4.*,
not gcc4! Hence Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 (and Centos 4.8) will work
with gcc4 builds despite listing gcc 3.4.6 on
distrowatch.com.

Note: Another way to look at this is that distros needing gcc295 are so old
that libstdc++ cannot be reasonably
depended upon, gcc3 distros are too old to have libstdc++.so.6 but do have
libstdc++.so.5, and gcc4 are distros that
are modern enough to provide libstdc++.so.6.

gcc295 implies that you have the Slackware 8.1 glibc 2.2.5 and other similar-age libraries, for instance, since SW81 comes with gcc 2.95.3. Sindi



  • [BL] opera and gcc, baslinux, 08/16/2010

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