Huge changes

[Rahul Siddharthan]

>I have read some months ago that there are indeed a couple of advantages
>in gcc 3 although compile time is slower than in 2 (is binary execution
>also slower?).

No, binary execution in gcc3 is *much* faster (really there's no
reason to use gcc2 any more, i.m.o).  On my code (computational 
biology stuff) gcc3 is almost as fast as icc 8, sometimes faster.
For the end user, that's what matters.  Plus there's the
improvements and standards-compliance in C++, etc.

>But what is for DragonFly the advantages of 4 over 3 or
>even 2?

2 deserves to die and is unsupported upstream.  Eventually, 3 will 
also die upstream.

GCC 4's release notes are here:
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.0/changes.html
It has a new optimisation framework, Fortran 95, and other things.  
Eventually they expect compile times also to improve.

Rahul