[cobalt-security] Re: Compilers & RH 7.1 Was: Re: Redhat upgrade???

[John Bailey <support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Honestly, its really not broken. Here's the problem:
>
> "The problem of compatibility, first argued in the earlier linux-kernel
> thread, is that programs created with the 2.96 version of GCC are not
> compatible with GCC 2.95.2, the last official release, and the future GCC
> 3.0 release, due to incompatible object files."

And honestly, I wasn't mixing object files.  All files I was dealing with
were compiled on the same 2.96 compiler, so I really fail to see how
incompatibility with other versions of GCC would be an issue.

I maintain my assertion that I consider any compiler which fails to
compile code which adheres to the language standard to be broken.  I might
go as far as admitting that this might cover quite a lot of compilers
(maybe all), as it's so difficult to prove that software is defect free,
but in this case, I would consider the build of GCC 2.96 with RH7.1 to be
'particularly broken'.

A compiler that won't compile doesn't really live up to its name.

John.