Chris Quenelle's Weblog
Thoughts on developer tools.

Monday July 10, 2006

Linux compilers update

The Linux Compilers Technology Preview was updated recently (download here), and the Sun Developer Network Channel (a kind of video newsletter) will talking about Linux this month. So it seems like a good time for me to jump in and start rambling on the topic of Linux Compilers.

Vijay manages most of the compiler groups, and he wrote a good summary of the new features. Or you can read the somewhat longer and more dry description in the README file for TP4. Pay careful attention to the part about how to set $PATH, in case you have never used a shell before. :-P  Oh yeah!  And don't forget to file bug reports if you have problems.  Of course if you don't want to wait until the next release for a fix you should check out the latest summary (PDF) of Sun's software support offerings.

You can find other blogs relating to Sun Studio by checking the technorati web site under the "sun studio" tag. Giri and Richard and I tend to show up on that list a lot, along with others. And of course, you'll find lots of good information about Elvis's recording studio.

Some of the biggest news is that the god father of Sun's Linux compilers has his own blog now. (Welcome Roman!)

This seems like a good time to mention some of my previous linux related blog posts, and also test my HTML editor's ability to handle bullet items. ;-)

• Some Linux releases need a glibc fix to run our compilers
  
• We implemented gcc's -m32 and -m64 options because it was a good idea
• The core header files on Linux are pretty gcc specific (read more about it), and this is one of the reasons we keep adding gcc __attributes__ to the Sun compilers.
• I called out a posting by Nik M. giving a quick overview of controlling parallel job steps in dmake and gmake. If you use the parallel features of gmake, you might want to code your makefiles so they can work with either gmake or dmake.

I installed two operating systems on my home laptop recently. First I installed Solaris (resulting in me buying a new wireless card, and still not managing to get it to work).  The week after that I installed Ubuntu Linux.  The Linux installation was massively easier.  I can't figure out why the Solaris group isn't copying Linux installation and packaging features like crazy. This is one area where all the popular Linux distros have us beat hands down. In the open source world, copying is the sincerest form of flattery (IMHO).

Look for future Linux Compilers updates to be a part of the new Sun Studio Express program, and let us know what you think.