Why does Slack7.1 still ship with EGCS?

[MBMarduk]

Yay! My first post in "Programming" j/k :D

I posted this question before in "General..." , but a bump and two days later I'm starting to think no-one there would know anyway.

So I thought "the people in Programming... should prolly know this", because people spending time in here might just have more experience compiling stuff.

I read up on the story of GCC; EGCS being a "development/fork version of GCC", and how eventually they merged(?) both again into a "grand GCC".

Maybe I'm all wrong on the subject, but why does Slack7.1 ship with EGCS instead when AFAIK the other distros ship GCC?
Has it (EGCS) proven to be buggy/problematic?

Doesn't it seem stupid to ship an OLDER (http://gcc.gnu.org/releases.html#timeline), compiler when gcc 2.95.x is the norm nowadays?

Does anyone know where EGCS keeps its {GCC equivalent: libg++.so.*} files? I was trying to see if all the Slack utils needed for a kernel compile were up-to-date...but couldn't check these.

TIA
-Mike

[nanode]

OIC:

nanode@stout:~$ gcc --version
egcs-2.91.66


I never noticed this :) I'm not much of a C/C++ coder, but am doing more all the time.

I updated all the needed stuff when 2.4.0 came out and recall that all my libs were current out of the box. I had a link to all the needed updates and version numbers, but can't find it now :(

[jemfinch]

IIRC, that egcs version of one of the few "blessed" kernel-compiling compilers.

I could be wrong, and that could have changed since I last read kernel traffic, but I remember seeing, I think, that version and gcc 2.7.2.

I know they're still finding bugs in 2.95.2.

Jeremy

[Qubit]

In case you didn't spot it yet, GCC 2.95.2 is on CD4.

[Energon]

Originally posted by jemfinch:
IIRC, that egcs version of one of the few "blessed" kernel-compiling compilers.

This is exactly the reason why... they use egcs for kernel compiling... if you watch -current on the FTP site, you'll see that they're doing both gcc and egcs... one for the kernel, one that's set to be the default compiler...

although if you just visit the forums at Slackware's site, you'd probably find a much better and more accurate answer...

[MBMarduk]

THX for the replies!

Glaurung:
No, I didn't know GCC was on DISK 4, AFAIK Slack7.1 has only 3 (ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-7.1/iso/) CDs :confused: :confused: :confused:
Do you have another d/l-URL?

jemfinch/Energon:
Sorry, I have no idea what the heck you're talking about! PLease explain? What does "IIRC" mean? R U saying EGCS is BETTER/WORSE at compiling kernels? Is that it?

Energon: thx for the tip on forums; I totally forgot about that.. :o :rolleyes:

Latur...
Mike

[Energon]

Slack does only have 3 discs, I'm not sure what he's talking about up there... but they're not really "disk 1, 2, 3", they're just extended directories off the ftp that get put into an ISO... what you want is the /contrib disk (which maps to ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slakware/contrib/ I believe)...

What jemfinch and I were talking about, is that egcs is the compiler that Linus recommends for compiling the kernel... I don't know exactly why, but that's what he (and other kernel hackers) have said... and Patrick V. (who maintains slack) goes by what the head guys recommend when he can... just know that you're perfectly fine w/ egcs and that you're very much on-par with what the best of the best out there use... :)

IIRC = if I recall correctly...

[MBMarduk]

Originally posted by Energon:
...egcs is the compiler that Linus recommends for compiling the kernel...(and other kernel hackers)... and Patrick V... what the head guys recommend...

Yeah, thanks...If THEY say so, then so be it, I don't need to use anything else.

-Mike

[Qubit]

I have a 4CD set :)

CD1 is the main installation, CD2 is zipslack and some other strange stuff and CD3 and 4 are sources.

[MBMarduk]

Ohh. I see...easy to forget some people actually BUY Slack ;) Good for you.

Sorry for the too-frequent replies.

[Energon]

Originally posted by Glaurung:
I have a 4CD set :)

CD1 is the main installation, CD2 is zipslack and some other strange stuff and CD3 and 4 are sources.

funny, I have your CD1 and CD2 on a single ISO, then another CD for /contrib stuff (again, another ISO), and another CD that's all the source... I wonder why the downloadable ISOs are different than what comes packaged...

EDIT - I see, I just read the README from the iso directory... apparently the ISOs you can download are like this:

install disk
/contrib disk
/source disk

the 4 CD set you can buy is like this:

install disk
/bigslack disk
/contrib disk
/source disk

and it has some extra archives from off the net... so you get everything by downloading except the extra archives and big slack (which isn't the same as ZipSlack by any means)...

[ 22 March 2001: Message edited by: Energon ]