On Fri, Apr 22, 2005 at 11:46:04AM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > Actually, what I'm more "worried" about is the optimizations added to 4.x > ... I know, for instance, that with FreeBSD's kernel, for the longest time > you couldn't use the higher optimizations in 3.x, since it would cause > "unexpected results" ...
For a long time, the Linux kernel was meant to be compiled with specific versions of GCC, because some assembly code was written in such a way that the specific bugs in that compiler version made it write the exact code they needed. So a new GCC release would fix the bugs, therefore breaking Linux; they had to create new, specially crafted buggy code to account for the bugs in the new compiler ;-) I think nowadays those issues are pretty much settled. (Not sure if you can compile the Linux kernel with GCC 4 anyway.) Maybe this was the issue with the FreeBSD kernel as well, I don't know. I wonder if this new GCC release could allow us to examine the strict aliasing issue again. -- Alvaro Herrera (<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) "Amanece. (Ignacio Reyes) El Cerro San Cristóbal me mira, cínicamente, con ojos de virgen" ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
