Re: Linux 2.4.34-pre1

[Adrian Bunk]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 10:36:33PM +0000, Willy Tarreau wrote:

> Hi !

Hi Willy!

>...
> I've been reluctant at first for the usual reasons : "who has a 2.4
> distro with gcc4 ?", and after recalling all the trouble Marcelo
> had to deal with during the gcc3 update. But after discussion with
> some people, I realized that the problem is not here, it's for the
> kernels those people have to maintain for other systems (eg: servers,
> firewalls, etc...) and which they suddenly cannot build anymore after
> they have updated the distro on their desktop PC.
>...
> Since most of them were sleeping bugs waiting for someone to wake
> them up, I considered it was worth merging them provided that we
> observe no regression. So I have created a separate tree for it
> that I will merge into mainline in a few pre-releases if we don't
> encounter any problem.
>...

My points against allowing to compile kernel 2.4 with gcc 4 are:

- There isn't much testing coverage - and will never be much testing
  coverage - of using a kernel 2.4 compiled with gcc 4.
  We've already seen several cases where only some compiler versions
  caused miscompilations or exposed a runtime bug in the kernel.
  Since there shouldn't be any reason for still using a 2.4 kernel
  except for "never change a running system", I don't see a good
  reason for allowing such an untested gcc/kernel combination.

- Even if your distribution does no longer ship any gcc 3, it's
  easy building and using your own gcc 3.4.6:
    wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-3.4.6/gcc-3.4.6.tar.bz2
    tar xjf gcc-3.4.6.tar.bz2
    mkdir build-gcc
    cd build-gcc
    ../gcc-3.4.6/configure --enable-languages=c --prefix=/usr/local/gcc-3.4.6
    make bootstrap
    make install
    # change HOSTCC and CC in the toplevel Makefile of the kernel:
    # HOSTCC = /usr/local/gcc-3.4.6/bin/gcc
    # CC = /usr/local/gcc-3.4.6/bin/gcc

> Regards,
> Willy
>...

cu
Adrian

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