On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 10:40:57AM -0700, Gary Winiger wrote: > > The short version of my position is that the Apache headers and runtime > > libraries should not be part of an ON consolidation, but should be > > provided by the Sun Studio compiler team. The headers should be part of > > the compiler, not installed in /usr/include, and the runtime libraries > > should be delivered into Solaris by the Sun Studio team just as other > > C++ runtime libraries are currently delivered. > > My understanding is that such things as KDE depend on this library. > If correct, is the proposal that Sun Studio needs to be > purchased/installed in order to run KDE?
The C++ runtime and misc. libraries, like the C runtime and misc. libraries, need to be part of the installed system, not part of the compiler suite, at least if the runtime takes the form of shared ELF objects (as opposed to being statically linked). The fact that there exist ABI incompatibilities between different compilers and even different versions of the same compiler, and the need (I assume!) to ship BOTH Sun Studio AND g++ means that we have to find a way to deal with multiple C++ runtimes and libraries. I could be wrong about this assumption. Perhaps we can ship just one of these C++ compilers, but I doubt it. It'd be nice to have similar functionality in Sun Studio and g++, but given the C++ ABI issues that can't be the most important issue from the ARC's point of view, right? It's got to be to find a way for libraries built with both compilers to be available on the installed system, and to find a way to keep from confusing developers. That is, IMO, we should bite the bullet and deal with the multiplicity of C++ ABIs. We should, of course, try to keep those to an absolute minimum (that would 2, until g++ breaks its ABI next anyways). Nico --
