Re: Any objections to swapping base compilers to make gcc4.7 the default?

["Samuel J. Greear" <sjg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 2:03 AM, John Marino <dragonflybsd@marino.st> wrote:
> The gcc-4.4 compiler is still the default compiler on DragonFly-3.3. There
> seems to be general consensus on IRC that it's time to promote gcc-4.7 to
> that role and have gcc-4.4 serve as the backup.
>
> Is there any major objection to doing this?
>
> From a pkgsrc point of view, over 11,150 packages build with gcc-4.7. There
> are some older packages that fail the stricter gcc-4.7 checks that are
> easily patched, but they take time to add.  However, one could take a page
> from dports where gcc-4.4 is the primary compiler for pkgsrc regardless of
> which the system uses.  So to summarize: gcc-4.7 can already build most of
> what gcc-4.4 can in pkgsrc (plus some that it can't), and users could put
> "DRAGONFLY_CCVER?=gcc44" in the /usr/pkg/etc/mk.conf file if they want to
> keep using gcc-4.4 for packages.
>
> There's only one known problem with gcc-4.7 right now: The plugin mechanism
> introduced around gcc-4.6 doesn't work right.  The world/kernel doesn't use
> this mechanism and only 1-2 packages are failing because of it.
> Nevertheless I'd like to fix it, so I'll attempt to do before before a
> compiler switch.  However, failing to do so shouldn't block the switch.
>
> So as the title says, is there a good reason to hold off on making gcc-4.7
> the primary compiler?
>
> John

With gcc47, LDBL_MAX will not fit in a long double

I cannot point to specific problems this might cause but it is
obviously wrong and should be fixed before it becomes the default.

Sam