compiler thoughts

Tuesday June 05, 2007

GCCfss 4.0.4 is LIVE!

We got our next version of GCCfss 4.0.4 available for download here

Main differences vs GCCfss 4.0.3:

• based on plain GCC version 4.0.4


• supplied SUNW0scgfss backend is essentially the same backend found in Sun Studio 12
  The users can use either one, however I recommend to use SUNW0scgfss archive since its download size is much smaller. It's easier to install and has only needed binaries, whereas Studio 12 is huge.


• fully relocatable!
  Just download front-end tarball (SUNW0gccfss.tar.bz2) and backend tarball (SUNW0scgfss.tar.bz2), bunzip2 and untar them and run 'gcc'. The driver will pick up correct compiler components for Solaris 9 or 10, include files, libraries, etc regardless of compiler location. Compare that to plain GCC!


• much higher benchmark performance.
  gcc middle-end tree optimizations are no longer run. gimplification is done in a different way to preserve high level structures needed for Studio 12 optimizer to perform complex array and loop transformations.


• better debuggability


• besides ATS, BIT and Thread Analyzer tools SUNW0scgfss archive includes new Discover Tool that detects programming errors related to the allocation and use of program memory at runtime on SPARC systems.


• all the issues mentioned on the forum as of today have been addressed