*BSD News Article 6535


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!lynx!zia.aoc.nrao.edu!laphroaig!cflatter
From: cflatter@nrao.edu (Chris Flatters)
Subject: Re: Compiling gcc-2.2.2, has someone done it?
Message-ID: <1992Oct14.151620.19618@zia.aoc.nrao.edu>
Sender: news@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
Reply-To: cflatter@nrao.edu
Organization: NRAO
References: <886@felix.Sublink.Org>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 15:16:20 GMT
Lines: 27

In article 886@felix.Sublink.Org, guest@felix.Sublink.Org (guest) writes:
>I have been trying for a while to compile gcc-2.2.2 but without success.
>The first part of the bootstrap (make LANGUAGE=c) only works if I
>undefine __GNUC__ because of a redefinition of va_list. Other errors
>popup compiling eprintf in libgcc2.
>
>I want gcc-2.2.2 because the builtin gcc (I think 1.95) died with
>a "Virtual memory exhausted" while compiling a X11 appliation I'm
>working on using gcc-2.1 on SCo-ODT platform.

I'd be rather surprised if gcc 2.2.2 uses significantly less VM than gcc 1.39.
But there are some good reasons to go for gcc 2.0 or later.  The ones that
concern me the most are.

* Better fp code generation for 80x87: gcc 2.x has improvements in its model of
  a floating-point unit that allow it to make better use of the register stack.
  Comparing 386BSD benchmark runs with old runs on Linux, I would expect about
  a factor 2 run-time improvement for numerically intensive code compiled with
  gcc 2.x over gcc 1.x.

* Better compliance with the C++ ARM (note that C++ support is integrated
  with GNU C in release 2.x).

* C++ templates (a big win if you are using C++ rather than C).

	Chris Flatters
	cflatter@nrao.edu