Features/gcc4.4

gcc 4.4

Summary

Switch GCC in Fedora 11 to 4.4.x, rebuild all packages with it.

Owner

• Name: Jakub Jelinek
• email: jakub@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Releases/11
• Last updated: 2009-01-26
• Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description

GCC 4.4.0 is going to be released soon (has been frozen for regression/documentation bugfixes only since November, 1st). Initial packages are prepared in dist-f11-gcc44. I'd also like to change default ISA and tuning flags for several architectures, -march=i586 -mtune=generic from -march=i386 -mtune=generic for i?86, -march=z9-109 -mtune=z10 for s390{,x} and -march=power4 for powerpc -m64.

Benefit to Fedora

See http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html for the list of changes. It features a new, rewritten, register allocator and a bunch of other improvements.

Scope

All packages should be rebuilt with the new gcc once it hits dist-f11.

How To Test

GCC has its own testsuite, which is run during the package build, plus many other packages with automated tests also help to test the new gcc.

User Experience

Users will be able to see compiled code improvements and use the newly added features, such as improved C++0x support etc.

Dependencies

All packages need to be rebuilt.

Contingency Plan

If bugs are discovered, I'd appreciate help from the package owners in preparing self-contained testcases to speed up analysis and fixing the bugs. Don't have time to debug issues in 8000+ packages, especially when in many cases it could be caused by undefined code in the packages etc. I don't expect we'll have to fall back to the older gcc.

Documentation

http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html

Release Notes

Fedora 11 comes with GCC 4.4.0 as primary compiler, see http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html for user visible changes in it.

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/gcc4.4

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