What Distro to use

[der.hans]

Am 03. Nov, 2000 schwäzte Kevin Buettner so:

> So, there would've come a time when Red Hat (and other distros, if
> they want use the latest/greatest gcc) would've had to bite the
> bullet and break ABI compatibility with previous versions.  Red
> Hat's choice of gcc-2.96 means that they'll have to do it twice
> which is something that probably should have been avoided.
> 
> However, I think Red Hat would've been criticized no matter what they
> did on this compiler issue.  If they would've been more conservative
> and stayed with egcs-2.91.66 which is getting rather long in the
> tooth, they would've been criticized by C++ developers for not
> releasing a more modern compiler which addresses their concerns.

I'd think stability is more important :).

Couldn't they have done a libc5-libc6 transitionary thingy? What I mean is
ship with egcs-2.91.66, but make gcc-2.96 available? This probably
would've been tons more work, but I'd think it wouldn't be too bad. Not
that I know anything about setting up multiple compiler environments on a
single box :). The user space kernel enhancements that are coming out will
greatly increase the ease of such things for developers, right?

The other question is whether or not they needed to build packages with
2.96 or whether they could've (and maybe did) stayed with 2.91? Are there
compatability probs with that?

Not trying to second-guess RedHat, rather just interested in the tech. You
mention that changes are definitely happening, so those of us who use
other dists are gonna have to go through this at some point as well. Those
using RH are also going to have to go through it again due to the changes
you mention in 3.0.

If we better understand it, we might be better prepared to deal with it,
which is especially important for those who have management that isn't pro
Linux.

ciao,

der.hans
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