Grant wrote:
I've been stuck on gcc-3.4.6 on my hardened profile system (currently:
hardened/linux/amd64/10.0) for a very long time. Now it looks like
gcc-4.3.4 has been stabilized for hardened profiles. Has anyone
tested it? This system is critical for me, so I've got to be careful.
- Grant
A lot of us have been testing the new GCC for a while now using the
hardened-development overlay. It's as stable as 3.4.x was in my experience.
About a year and a half ago, I reformatted a laptop and started from
scratch using gcc-4.x from the overlay, because what the hell. Many
issues from the gcc-3.x era actually cleared up with the new toolchain.
Once I convinced myself that things were working correctly, I began to
migrate "real" systems to the development GCC one at a time.
All of my personal machines are using gcc-4.x, and things work much
better on the desktop than they did with gcc-3.x. Many of our servers
have also been migrated: web, database, dns, mail, monitoring, firewall,
etc. all work fine. I have noticed absolutely no difference (either
positive or negative) on those machines.
In short, switching your default compiler with gcc-config isn't going to
change anything. Test any new packages/upgrades just as you would have
with gcc-3.x.
