On Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:21:01 +0100, lee wrote: > > As 4.9.3 is marked stable, I guess that's what'd you get per > > default. > > 4.8.5 > > I'd have to run emerge --sync to know about more recent versions. How > is that supposed to be used, btw? I only run that when I do want to > update everything. Now if I didn't want to update anything but gcc, > could I run emerge --sync and install gcc 5.x without having trouble
Emerge --sync only updates the portage tree, so emerge --sync emerge -a sys-devel/gcc:5 > with anything else I might install before actually updating everything? > So if I'd never explicitly update everything but run emerge --sync > frequently, things would be updated over time, occasionally? No, nothing would get updated. To do that you need to run emerge @world after emerge --sync. > > Stuff compiled with older gcc's should run with newer libgcc*[0], but > > stuff compililed with a newer gcc might not run with the older > > libgcc*. Same goes, with more problems IIRC, for libstdc++. > > So beware of that. Apart from that? I'm not aware of problems. > > Uhm ... So I might break the system by switching between compiler > versions? That's highly unlikely as software that has been compiled with the old compiler will still work. You may find that some programs fail to recompile with the new compiler, but I didn't experience that with the 4.9>5 step, although I had some that would build with 4.8 but not 4.9. I have an application which I would like to compile with gcc > 5.x just to see if that's even possible. I could switch, try it, and > then switch back. Exactly, run gcc-config, compile/emerge the program, run gcc-config again. > > BTW: why is gcc not also handled via eselect? Even if that'd just > > call gcc-config? There was a gcc eselect module but it was dropped in favour of gcc-config as it didn't do what was needed of it. This is not unique to gcc, we also have binutils-config. As to why no one has written an eselect wrapper for either of these, I'd guess it's harder than it sounds or no one who can do it feels the need. -- Neil Bothwick Windows Error #02: Multitasking attempted. System confused.
pgpPu15BfbPHb.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
