Johan Grönqvist wrote:
simon h skrev:
I wonder why Debian needs three versions of the GCC compiler: 4.1, 4.2,
and 4.3? Shouldn't one be enough? Is it because the compiler has no
down-compatibility?
I think that is the reason, yes. I also think that lack of manpower is
the reason there are not even more (older) versions of gcc in debian.
At <http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html>, you can see that there are
changes between versions that can break certain programs. I was recently
asked for advice by someone that needs a 3.x version of gcc.
(For completeness: I will suggest debootstrap/schroot for running gcc3.X
without affecting his current installation.)
When you install a later version, it doesn't necessarily become the new
default GCC. For example, even though I have installed GCC 4.4 on my
machine, 4.3 is still the version I get when I type gcc --version.
Again, this is generally because the kernel and other system programs
were probably compiled using it.
To use 4.4, I can specify 4.4 on the command line:
#gcc-4.4 -o hello hello.c
When building a large program than has been packaged by Debian, or in
the usual GNU .tar.gz/.tgz style, (something that uses make) one can
usually set an environment variable:
#export CC=gcc-4.4
#./configure
#make
#make install
#export CC=
Or even just:
#CC=gcc-4.4; ./configure; make; make install
Hope this helps,
Mark Allums
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