Regarding g++, let's take a step back.
There is nothing special about the Apache library. It is an
implementation of the API (programming interface) described by the C++
standard. *We* care about it because the two implementations of the C++
standard library currently supplied with Sun Studio are each missing
features that some applications need. ("Why" is a long story.)
If you write to the C++ standard API, it should not matter which
implementation you use. It will matter only if you have a deficient
implementation. (Missing features, non-standard behavior, or poor
performance, for example.)
G++ comes with its own implementation of the C++ standard library that
is quite standard-conforming. You should be able to build the apps with
g++ without the Apache library. (If you have tried and found that they
don't work, I would be surprised, because nearly all Open Source apps
are developed using gcc, then tweaked to work with other compilers.)
I think that if we created a version of libstdcxx built with g++, there
would be no users. Using libstdcxx with g++ has at least the same issues
as using libcstdcxx with Sun Studio without direct compiler support --
command lines get rather tricky. And it's not clear that libstdcxx
would have significant advantages over the g++ library in any case.
G++ has an additional trouble spot: the g++ ABI is not particularly
stable. If you build a library with one version of g++, you cannot be
sure it will work with another compiler version. If we provided a g++
version of libstdcxx, we would have to document it as known to work with
only a specific version of g++.
My recommendation is not to consider further a g++ version of libstdcxx.
---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage at sun.com
