gcc 3.4 vs 4.0

[cjb at mrao.cam.ac.uk (Chris Ball)]

>> On 24 Nov 2005 06:34:48, Stephen Adler <adler at stephenadler.com> said:

   > I also have the option of using gcc 4.0 instead. Does anyone have
   > any advice of the advantages of gcc 4 over gcc 3.4?

Optimisations are a good reason to consider gcc 4; the biggest
difference between the two is the merge of the tree-ssa branch
to gcc 4, which allows many whole-program optimisations that
weren't possible using the previous (RTL) optimisers, since 
tree-ssa retains a higher-level view of the code than RTL did.

   > Some people will never adopt a X.0 version of a package since they
   > deam it unstable

Several Linux distributions are shipping with gcc 4 only and with 
the system compiled using gcc 4, so there's no lack of trust in it 
from the community.

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at mrao.cam.ac.uk>    <http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~cjb/>