Wishlist for unfrozen base

[Simon 'corecode' Schubert]

Hasso Tepper wrote:
* gcc 3.4 removal. There are two options - remove it entirely or just 
  disable it by default (it still might be potentially useful, for example 
  gcc34 in the pkgsrc will never support stack protection). Opinions?
Remove completely.

* gcc 4.x update. gcc 4.1.2 we use at the moment is too buggy - to the 
  point where some projects ignore bugreports at all if gcc-4.1.x is in 
  use (ffmpeg for example). We should decide what path to choose at all 
  with it though. There is several issues with newer gcc's - there is a 
  license issue (newer ones at some point use GPLv3) and gcc 4.3 and up 
  have a more dependencies (do we want all these in the base?).
I don't think we need to care about GPLv3 in the toolchain.  I ported 
gcc-4.4 in pkgsrc wip, so if that compiles base well (not sure if Sascha 
did a whole world/kernel run with it), we could import gcc-4.4.

>   we still
  have to decide whether it's OK to pull in GMP and MPFR libraries (needed 
  for 4.3 and up).
That's a pain, yes.  But in the long run we won't have a choice, I think. 
 Porting is probably also only a one-shot thing.

* binutils update. The very same license issue potentially exists (2.18 
  and up are under GPLv3), but it would allow to use many performance 
  improvements introduced in newer versions.
Likewise I think we should move forward there.

Corecode expressed his view that we shouldn't get rid of libc_r entirely - 
it's actually good potential testcase and I tend to agree with him. But 
we should do two things IMHO:

* move both libc_r.so and libthread_xu.so out from /usr/lib so no app has 
  a chance to link against these directly (yes, corecode, I think now 
  it's a good idea ;)
Agree.

* introduce stubs for stuff not in libc_r - barriers, spinlocks and some 
  more
Will that be sufficient, will it work?

There are also smaller items in the wishlist like updating ncurses and gdb 
(hint! ;P), but ... Yeah, I want a pony as well ...
I think I started looking at gdb at some point.  Will have to look again.

cheers
  simon
--
  <3 the future  +++  RENT this banner advert  +++   ASCII Ribbon   /"\
  rock the past  +++  space for low CHF NOW!1  +++     Campaign     \ /
Party Enjoy Relax   |   http://dragonflybsd.org      Against  HTML   \
Dude 2c 2 the max   !   http://golden-apple.biz       Mail + News   / \