Re: [PLUG] RedHat 7.1 glibc2.1 Backward compat - revisited

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Wed, May 23, 2001 at 09:49:54PM -0400, Jason Costomiris wrote:
> Care to elaborate?  Let me guess, you're going to go on and on about
> the gcc that RH ships, right?  You're probably going to go on about C++
> incompatability, right?  Nevermind that C++ code has never been binary
> compatable between gcc releases before.

Um... that's funny, since binaries built with NetBSD's in-tree
gcc (egcs-2.91.66) and the optional toolchain gcc (gcc 2.95.3) both
seem to work just fine together on my NetBSD system.

I'm going to complain more about RedHat's not caring that the Free
Software Foundation developers actively discouraged distribution
of 2.96, going so far as to ask RedHat *not* to do it, as it would
break compatibility with everything else (including the kernel they
shipped with their operating system), and they went ahead with it
anyway. I'm going to complain that, having done this, they aren't
exactly doing much to support the wacky gcc they included in their
release.

> Nevermind the fact that the RH gcc 2.96 is more standards compliant
> than any shipping gcc out there. Nevermind that the RH gcc 2.96
> has fewer compiler bugs than the other gcc releases out there.

I'm also going to complain that those two statements are patently
untrue. With regard to the first, in general standards do not make
truth, and in particular the C++ breakage you allude to above is
quite the opposite. With regard to the second, I'd challenge you
to make a list of bugs in the two releases. Recall that regression
bugs to compile code that compiled under previous releases of gcc
and to link against libraries compiled with previous releases of gcc
DO count.

I'm not throwing FUD around here, I really didn't have much of a
problem with RedHat after they cured their security stupidity from
RedHat 6.2... till I learned that the release that fixed that
included this little gem of nonsense. I would love to *like* RedHat.
I have friends who work there. I see it used all the damn time on
Swarthmore's campus. But every release of RedHat I've seen has had
at least one glaring stupidity in it, and 7.x is no exception.

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net

PS, probably worth noting that, despite my allusion to Swarthmore
College, I do not speak on their behalf. Nor the NetBSD Foundation's,
for that matter.


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