Re: Require at least gcc 4.2

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Bean<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Vladimir 'phcoder'
> Serbinenko<address@hidden> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Bean<address@hidden> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Vladimir 'phcoder'
>>> Serbinenko<address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> It looks like grub2's codebase triggers bugs in old compiler. I don't
>>>> feel like we should support these compilers at all. Hence this patch.
>>>> If someone wants to use older compiler he's free to patch this check
>>>> out but this way he's aware that we don't support gcc prior to 4.2
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I don't think it's gcc's version that's causing the problem, it's the
>>> bug of some local port like apple's gcc. In fact, I've been using
>>> mingw gcc 3.4.5 for a long time and doesn't seem to have issue. It'd
>>> be nice to locate the specific bug and write a small test problem to
>>> check for it (something like NESTED_FUNC_ATTR), instead of reply
>>> blindly on gcc version. (what if apple's gcc-4.2 also contain some bug
>>> ?)
>> There was a test to check for it but it was removed because there is
>> no way to do such check in cross-compiler environment.
>> Even if gcc<4.2 seem to work ok I think we shouldn't waste resources
>> on it and officially declare a minimal requirement ("you're free to go
>> under requirement but don't post bugreports if you do")
>
> Hi,
>
> Could you post a small test problem that illustrate the bug ?
Yves Blusseau reported to me that modules compiled with gcc-4.0 based
Apple's CC failed whereas the ones compiled with gcc-4.2 worked well.
As MacOSX is the only OS I'm aware of which ships pre-4.2 gcc by
default (the actually ship both 4.0 and 4.2) I thought it may be just
a gcc 4.0 bug. Even if it's not so I still think dropping support for
old building environments is a good thing since it decreases bug
possibilities and so maintainance work too. If you want to add
--disable-gcc-check it's ok with me. Just take my patch as base,
replace the check line with
#if defined (__GNUC__) && (__GNUC__ < 4 || (__GNUC__ == 4 &&
__GNUC_MINOR__ < 2))
add --disable-gcc-check and commit (since it's approved by Robert
Millan in another mail)
>
> --
> Bean
>
> gitgrub home: http://github.com/grub/grub/
> my fork page: http://github.com/bean123/grub/
>
>
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-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko

Personal git repository: http://repo.or.cz/w/grub2/phcoder.git