On Thu, 3 May 2001 22:24:49 +1200,
"Steve Wray" <steve.wray@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Sorry, I had been under the (obviously mistaken) impression
>that since I had the latest release of Mandrake, that it would
>have a (default) C compiler that actually compiled basic things
>like the kernel.
The kernel is notorious as being a bad test case for gcc. There are
unusual C and assembler constructs that are ambiguously defined or
simply not in the gcc documentation but happen to work. Most people do
not try anything unusual but the kernel is full of special case code.
If gcc changes something that was fully documented then it is a gcc
bug. But if gcc changes undocumented or ambiguous behaviour then we
get arguments about whether gcc or the kernel is wrong. In that
situation the kernel developers recommend specific versions of gcc for
compiling the kernel. Sometimes distributions have to ship two
compilers, an older one which is known to compile the kernel correctly
and a newer one for user space which might compile the kernel or might
not. linux/Dcoumentation/Changes lists the required versions of gcc
for the kernel.
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