Re: Octave 2.0.16 and RedHat 7.0

[Trond Eivind Glomsrød]

"John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> writes:

> On 30-Oct-2000, Trond Eivind =?iso-8859-1?q?Glomsr=F8d?= <address@hidden> 
> wrote:
> 
> | Phil Cummins <address@hidden> writes:
> | 
> | >   Has anyone had any success or failure compiling Octave
> | > (either 2.0.16 or a development version) on RedHat 7.0?
> | 
> | We ship it, compiled with the compat compiler
> 
> Hmm.  I just compiled Octave 2.0.16 on a Debian system (unstable
> branch) using gcc 2.95.2 without any problems, so I don't think it
> should be required that you use `the compat compiler', whatever that
> is.
> 
> By default, does Red Hat 7.0 use some snapshot of gcc that is newer
> than 2.95.2? 

Yes. A snapshot was branched in July, QAed, fixed quite a bit etc.

> If so, why?

* bugs in 2.95.2 which couldn't be fixed in a binary compatible way 
* this was what the compiler engineers at former Cygnus wanted to
  support 
* much better C++ standards compliance
* multiplatform support (there are big performance increases all
  around as well, both on x86, Alpha and others), including being
  source-level compatible with the toolchain for IA64

http://lwn.net/2000/1005/a/rh-tools.php3

> | - octave 2.0.x violates
> | the C++ standard (which haven't always been a part of the standard
> | (although is has been for a couple of years now) and older gccs have
> | been very lax about enforcing). Fixing the use of reserved words
> | (like "not") as enums is easy, but then there is macro magic with
> | castings which is a lot harder to fix.
> 
> Would you like to submit patches to fix what you can?

Sure - I started making them, but got lost in the recursive macros
(the compiler is very strict nowadays, and didn't like one of the
castings) and decided for the other solution.
-- 
Trond Eivind Glomsrød
Red Hat, Inc.



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