Re: [Announce] XFS 1.1 Prerelease 2 available for testing

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sgi.com>]

On 22 Mar 2002, mdew wrote:

> Whats with the support of a non-standard gcc release "RH's 2.96",
> wouldnt it be more appropriate to support *atleast* 2.95.x and 3.0x
> since these are official releases?
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.96.html
> http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/gcc-2.96-3.0.html
>
> We dont live in a RH-centric world, so SGI should atleast support
> offical gcc-release versions.

Who said anything about supporting non-standard compilers?

>From the beginning, we have said that gcc-2.91.66/egcs 1.1.2 is the
compiler of choice for xfs.  This is not RH-centric.

http://gcc.gnu.org/egcs-1.1/

I said Steve used 2.96-101 from Red Hat and had good luck.  I said 2.95.2
had miscompiled xfs code.  Just passing along what has worked, and what
has caused problems.

It's not that we choose to "support" or "not support" compiler versions,
but that we have seen various compiler versions miscompile xfs code.  When
the problem can be isolated, the bug is submitted, and gcc gets fixed.
Regardless of compiler version, regardless of distribution.

The whole compiler issue is tricky.  Bugs show up in subtle and hard to
find ways.  We would like to be able to wholeheartedly recommend a recent,
official gcc release for compiling xfs, but we need help to do that.
People are going to have to use gcc version X, and put it in production or
heavy testing, and give detailed reports of the results.

For now, when someone asks "what should I use for xfs?" we're still saying
gcc-2.91.66/egcs 1.1.2 because that has shown the fewest problems so far.

-Eric