Arch toolchain

dolby · 2010-06-09 08:07:42

This question is mostly directed at Allan who is currently dealing with these stuff, but i guess having a seperate thread about this wont hurt. After all i wont have that much to add after my initial input.
I think the question is quite simple, but the answers are probably beyond my range of skills, or even mindset.

What does Arch gain by using a SO updated toolchain, namely the GCC stuff?

All i can think of as benefit is the fact that people from other distributions will turn into your CVS to find patches.
But most of those come from Fedora anyway who has a much more skilled and paid crew. And thats not a real benefit either.
On the other hand theres problems with packages, KDE Chromium and 1-2 others (you know better).
Is it all in the name of "bleeding edgeness"?

Would there be any disadvantages if Arch still used GCC 4.4.4?

Snapshots of applications usually lie in the AUR , not the official repos, let alone for such important packages.
Thanks.

edit: Oh and BTW i had ask a similar question a year ago as well: http://allanmcrae.com/2009/06/expectati … comment-21

Last edited by dolby (2010-06-09 08:13:19)

Allan · 2010-06-09 09:50:50

Well... luckily I read the forums.

The answer is Arch uses the latest upstream releases, subject of course to them not being completely broken. If you want a distribution that uses more "stable" package, look elsewhere.

The toolchain sits in [testing] for a couple of weeks upon a major update before moving. The gcc-4.5.0 upgrade broke mkinitcpio-busybox, khtml and chromium in our repos. In fact, users never saw the khtml breakage, because the toolchain was fixed before KDE was updated. All were only issues on x86_64 and all are fixed now.

We use snapshots only of the _release branches_ for our toolchain to save having to manually pull all the bug fix patches.

dolby · 2010-06-09 10:44:50

I posted here so potentialy interested other parties can join if they wanted to. (plus i know you read the forum)
IMO GCC is a special package cause every other depends on it in a way. But what you are basically saying is that its not treated as a special package right?
BTW i realise what you say about the snapshots and its perfectly understandable. What i mean though is that there wasnt needed to move into 4.5.0 so soon in the first place. But that would make GCC a "special package" i guess.

Last edited by dolby (2010-06-09 10:47:02)

Allan · 2010-06-09 10:58:26

It is treated as special. It always stays in [testing] for multiple weeks on a major upgrade. No other packages I maintain do that.

dolby · 2010-06-09 13:45:36

OK, thanks for answering.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-09 08:07:42

Arch toolchain

#2 2010-06-09 09:50:50

Re: Arch toolchain

#3 2010-06-09 10:44:50

Re: Arch toolchain

#4 2010-06-09 10:58:26

Re: Arch toolchain

#5 2010-06-09 13:45:36

Re: Arch toolchain

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