Rainer Orth wrote:
> I don't see CodeSourcery being very active with GCC for Solaris
> work these days (maybe their contract has ended?)
No, their contract has not ended. (I am the initiator/manager of the contact
for the 3.4.3 compiler).
We just don't have a whole lot of bugs that need fixing on the 3.4.3 compiler
right now (3.4.3 is a "supported" application in S10, since it is part of the
S10 Solaris release, so the primary purpose of the contract at this point is bug
fixing).
Mike
Rainer Orth wrote:
Alexey,
what exactly do you propose from technical side:
create 3 gcc-csl branches and test ON on 4 compilers ?
no: I'd propose the following:
* Identify the changes currently local to the csl-sol210-3_4-branch branch
(which is the basis for the gcc 3.4.3 in sfw) necessary to build
OpenSolaris and missing in GCC mainline/4.1 branch.
* Try to get as many of those changes as possible into gcc mainline, either
for 4.2 or for 4.3 after 4.2 branches.
* Create two solaris vendor branches (this isn't a csl-only thing, but
should be backed by the opensolaris community as a whole): one off gcc
4.1 and another off gcc mainline.
* Apply the necessary changes there.
* Use the 4.1-based branch as the basis for a gcc 4.1 in sfw.
* Start testing with the 4.1-based branch regularly (and perhaps switch the
sfw gcc from 3.4 to 4.1 if this works out).
* Continue testing with the 4.2/mainline based gcc to make sure it at least
compiles ON to be able to switch when/if it is released/stable enough.
I think it would unwise to try to support development branch which is 4.2
in ON. Do you see that Linux adopts it ?
You need to distinguish two thinks:
* Building production Linux (or OpenSolaris) kernels with a gcc 4.2 based
compiler. This is clearly unwise.
* (Regularly) testing with such a compiler.
The former certainly does not happen, the latter does, as you can see from
regular bug reports about issues detected when building and running Linux
with gcc mainline.
The most recent shipped Ubuntu kernel for sparc 2.6.15 is built
with gcc 4.0.3-1
This may be due to what was current at the time they started the
corresponding release cycle. Switching compilers late in the cycle is
certainly a bad idea, but the result of the current OpenSolaris-with-GCC work
should effectively target the Solaris 11 release, so baseing something on
GCC 4.0 for that release is a bad idea since that compiler will be
completely obsolete/unmaintained at that time.
One thing is to make ON buildable with gcc 4.1 or 4.2, but to support
it is a bit different.
True, but this doesn't happen now either: the current O/N build procedure
only makes sure that it compiles with the sfw GCC 3.4.3, nothing more. I
think you will find much more support in the GCC community to fix bugs in
4.1/mainline than on the almost abandoned 4.0 branch.
While this does not apply to the ON changes necessary to build with GCC
(either GCCfss or GCC 4), it applies to the GCC changes necessary to do so.
That's orthogonal discussion. It's certainly would be great to have
GCC developers test their new features on ON.
I think you misunderstood: what I tried to say was: we need to feed back
most (if not all) OpenSolaris-specific GCC changes back into GCC mainline
(or a vendor branch if they are somehow unacceptable for FSF GCC).
Testing GCC on ON/Nevada is something the OpenSolaris community needs to
do: this is part of being a member of the GCC community. We cannot expect
others to do this for us.
On the other hand, I'd strongly argue against basing any development on GCC
4.0.x right now: there will most likely be no further release from that
branch, so I'd suggest to concentrate on the latest stable GCC release
(4.1.1 right now) or even on making sure everything still works with the
upcoming GCC 4.2.0 instead. Basing considerable amounts of work on an
obsolete version is a loosing proposition IMO.
No SC sponsored releases doesn't mean that there will be no further releases
from 4.0 branch. It seems Linux doesn't see the extra value of gcc 4.1
If there's no 4.0 branch maintainer, who would do the work on the 4.0
branch. I don't see CodeSourcery being very active with GCC for Solaris
work these days (maybe their contract has ended?), only Roger Sayle
recently started a considerable amount of work on GCC mainline for
Solaris/x86 (which is very good since that platform has been quite
neglected as a GCC platform).
Rainer
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Rainer Orth, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University
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