Re: GCC vs. /bsd

[Marc Espie <espie@nerim.net>]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 12:42:22AM +0000, Miod Vallat wrote:
> > Did you run every program on your system and validated all the options?
> > Or did it *appear* to work because it booted?
> > Did you measure all the performance gains you got?
> Well, experience has shown that gcc bugs in this case are so subtle that
> they do not show themselves until you push your kernel very hard (lots
> of network traffic, long uptime, etc).

I'm not at all certain all these ARE gcc bugs. Some probably are. A few are
probably just kernel bugs.

In some cases, timing issues can be involved in seeing some bugs, and 
optimizing the kernel further may rearrange the relative timings of
some sequences, and exhibit buggy behavior from the kernel.

So, you will say, if such bugs do exist, why don't they show up with
gcc and the standard options ?

Natural evolution: such bugs DO show up with gcc and the standard options,
but they don't survive long, since they are usually quickly noticed and
fixed.

I'm quite willing to dump quite a lot on gcc. But, hey, a bug is a bug.
And until you've fixed it, you can't be certain whose fault it is.