This is the mail archive of the cygwin-announce mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Updated: stable compiler package gcc4-4.3.4-4


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



I have just uploaded an updated GCC-4 package to cygwin.com. It will be
arriving at your favourite mirror next time it synchronizes itself with the
official Cygwin repository.

This release is a trivial rebuild of the current stable release, done
against the latest Cygwin environment in order to pick up support for recent
additions to the Cygwin C runtime - in particular, the new fenv.h header and
related functions, which the C++ compiler needs to know about.

As with the previous release, the Java and Ada compilers are known to have
some bugs, but the core compiler and primary languages (C, C++ and Fortran)
are all working well enough to be considered stable, conformant to the
relevant language specs, and production-ready.

**** IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE ALTERNATIVES SYSTEM:

The alternatives system (see 'man alternatives') is used with this package
to select the default system compiler that is invoked under the plain 'gcc'
(or 'g++', etc.) name without any -3 or -4 suffix.

Since the last release, the default system compiler (previously gcc-3)
is now switched to gcc-4 permanently. All future distro packages will
be built with this compiler, and indeed many already have been for some time,
so no significant disruption should arise. However, for those who would
prefer to retain gcc-3 as their system default compiler, it is easy to change
the alternatives selection.

Generally, you should switch all the compiler packages simultaneously to
either -3 or -4 versions; mixed usages aren't guaranteed to work. To this
end, two shell scripts are installed by this release:

/usr/bin/set-gcc-default-3.sh
/usr/bin/set-gcc-default-4.sh

These can be invoked to switch all the alternatives for the compiler en
masse. Note that not all language compilers exist in both -3 and -4 versions;
fortran changes names between the two versions, so doesn't clash, and D and
Pascal only exist in -3 versions currently.


**** IMPORTANT NOTE FOR GNAT USERS:

The GNAT tools do not understand the version-suffix system used by the other
gcc compilers in the package. If you attempt to invoke gnatmake-4, for
example, it will attempt to invoke plain unsuffixed names like "gnatchop",
"gnatbind" as subexecutables. In consequence, only the currently-selected
version of gnat chosen by the alternatives system can run correctly at any
given time; you should always configure the GNAT alternatives to select as
default the version you wish to use, by invoking one of the two scripts
mentioned above.


**** COMING NEXT:

This will almost certainly be the final gcc-4.3 series release. In the near
future the stable compiler will be promoted to 4.5 series and a test release
of 4.6 made available.

- ------------------------------ooOOOoo------------------------------
PLEASE SEND BUG REPORTS, PROBLEMS, ETC. TO THE CYGWIN MAILING LIST.
- ------------------------------ooOOOoo------------------------------


OBTAINING THE RELEASE
=====================

To update your installation, click on the "Install Cygwin now" link on the
http://cygwin.com/ web page. This downloads setup.exe to your system. Then,
run setup.exe, fill in all of the options, and make appropriate choices on the
"Select Packages" screen. Because this is a full "current" version release,
any gcc packages you currently have installed will be automatically selected
to update, but you'll need to select the Devel category to see gcc and friends
if you don't have them already installed.


NEWS
====

> From the README:

gcc4-4.3.4-4
- ------------------------------------------

This is the third full stable production release of the GCC 4 compiler
package for Cygwin. All the major runtime libraries are implemented
as DLLs as well as static archives. It can fully co-exist side-by-side
with the older Cygwin gcc-3.4.4 series compiler. All languages are
supported, although Ada and Java remain works-in-progress.

End-of-life for Cygwin-1.5.
===========================

This version is not released for the Cygwin-1.5 series. All future effort
will go into developing the compiler for Cygwin-1.7 and beyond. Building
the compiler from source under 1.5 is unsupported and unmaintained, but
possible; however, you would need to build yourself an updated version of
binutils from the sourceware.org CVS repository, and you would need to
apply the modern-binutils-on-cygwin-1.5-default-pseudo-reloc-fix.diff patch
found in the CYGWIN-PATCHES directory of this source release. Also it
would be unsupported and unmaintained, so if you're not comfortable doing
this sort of thing on your own, you probably don't want to start.

Now would be a good time to try 1.7, anyway :) It works really well.

What happened to gcc4-4.3.4-2?
==============================

I skipped a release number. The -2 release is reserved for any theoretical
upgrade to the 1.5 compiler that might ever be needed somewhere sometime.

Java users need an additional download to compile source to bytecode.
=====================================================================

As part of its infrastructure, GCJ uses the Eclipse Compiler for Java (ECJ)
to compile .java sources files to bytecode .class files. ECJ is shipped as
a JAR file, and is not supplied in this distribution (pending resolution of
licensing status and any self-hosting issues). It can be downloaded after
installation by running the supplied "/usr/sbin/download_ecj.sh" script, or
can be manually downloaded from ftp://sourceware.org/pub/java/ecj-latest.jar,
and moved and renamed to /usr/share/java/ecj.jar, which is where GCJ expects
to find it.

Known issues in Ada and Java.
=============================

The Ada compiler is currently implemented as a Frankenstein-like hybrid of
Cygwin/POSIX and MinGw/w32api code. This just barely hangs together, but
does not play nicely with Cygwin's pthread library functions; the outcome
is problems in the tasking implementation, including race conditions that
may lead to failure in early startup or termination.

There are problems with the Java compiler that are less well understood,
but also manifest themselves as testsuite failures in the thread- and
process-related tests.

These issues will be addressed in a future release of the compiler; for
now, Java and Ada cannot be considered first-class languages, but remain
somewhat experimental. It is likely however that both perform better than
the old 3.4 series compilers.

Static and shared linking of applications.
==========================================

By default, user applications will be linked against these DLLs. unless the
option '-static' is supplied to GCC during the build. If linking statically
against libstdc++, you should also use '-static-libgcc' to link likewise
against libgcc, or you will experience segfaults on program termination.

This compiler should be stable and production-ready, but as is always the
case with software, there may yet be bugs. Anything abnormal should be
reported, in the first instance, to the main Cygwin mailing list.

Cygwin port maintained by: Dave Korn <dave.korn.cygwin AT gmail DOT com BUT
use.the.list.please>
Please address all questions to the Cygwin mailing list at <cygwin AT cygwin
DOT com>, except for packaging issues which should be reported to the
cygwin-apps mailing list. See http://cygwin.com/lists.html for full details.

This is the key used for signing Cygwin GCC releases:

pub 1024D/6A388C3E 2008-05-31
uid Dave Korn (release signing key) <dave.korn.cygwin AT gmail.com>
sub 4096g/D4E41590 2008-05-31

Also available at a key-server near you!

- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin)
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=4Jzt
- -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

If you have questions or comments, please send them to the cygwin mailing
list at: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>.

*** CYGWIN-ANNOUNCE UNSUBSCRIBE INFO ***

If you want to unsubscribe from the cygwin-announce mailing list, look at the
"List-Unsubscribe: " tag in the email header of this message. Send email to
the address specified there. It will be in the format:

<cygwin-announce-unsubscribe-you=yourdomain.com@cygwin.com>

If you need more information on unsubscribing, start reading here:

http://sourceware.org/lists.html#unsubscribe-simple

Please read *all* of the information on unsubscribing that is available
starting at this URL.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin)

iEYEARECAAYFAk2KKPcACgkQTdKC5Wo4jD7XNQCgyOOX4iYDnMsWcSxB2qYlt2UH
sqUAnRoUewqB2Wi6cOXoEClrO5H4PL9Y
=P5oc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]