gcc & egcs under IRIX

Hello,
I am using gcc v.2.8.1 under IRIX 6.5. Does anubody know whether gcc
v.2.8.1 and egcs-1.1.2 from http://freeware.sgi.com/ are the same
compilers? Which one do you use to compile grass sources under IRIX?

  -Rado

Rado Bonk
Geography and Geology
UNO, Nebraska, 68182-0199,
rado@cosmos.unomaha.edu

Hello Rado

Rado Bonk wrote:

Hello,
I am using gcc v.2.8.1 under IRIX 6.5. Does anubody know whether gcc
v.2.8.1 and egcs-1.1.2 from http://freeware.sgi.com/ are the same
compilers? Which one do you use to compile grass sources under IRIX?

First of all, gcc v.2.8.1 is not the latest version of gcc for SGI. If
you look on the SGI freeware site you provided, the latest version is
gcc v.2.95.2.

As for the difference between egcs and gcc, the following is from the
gcc FAQ

=====================================================================

When we had gcc2 in a useful state, development efforts on gcc1 stopped
and we all concentrated on making gcc2 better than gcc1 could ever be.
This is the kind of step forward we wanted to make with the EGCS project
when it was formed in 1997.

In April 1999 the Free Software Foundation officially halted development
on the gcc2 compiler and appointed the EGCS project as the official GCC
maintainers.

We are in the process of merging GCC and EGCS, which will take some
time. The net result will be a single project which will carry forward
GCC development under the ultimate control of the GCC Steering
Committee.

======================================================================

So it appears that egcs is the better of the two and a collegue of mine
has said that most Linux distributors now ship egcs instead of gcc. But
from the above, egcs will eventually become gcc. You can find more
information about gcc and egcs from the gcc home page at
http://gcc.gnu.org/

Which one is best for grass on IRIX? I'm not sure, since we use the SGI
MipsPro compilers for our SGI grass installation. But in general, the
latest version of a compiler will supposedly give you the best
performance in the executables it creates.

My advice would be to try the egcs, since it seems to be the more
advanced compiler.

I hope this helps.

--
Sincerely,

Jazzman (a.k.a. Justin Hickey) e-mail: jhickey@hpcc.nectec.or.th
High Performance Computing Center
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Bangkok, Thailand

People who think they know everything are very irritating to those
of us who do. ---Anonymous

Jazz and Trek Rule!!!

Justin & friends,

The canonical reference is http://www.fsf.org/software/gcc/gcc.html, which
covers some of the egcs/gcc semantics. The "gcc" term used to mean Gnu C
Compiler, but is now "Gnu Compiler Collection". The current release of the
collection is 2.95.2, and has multiple front-ends. Since mid-1999, I
understand that egcs "became" gcc again, but there's more on the page
mentioned above.

Hope this helps,

Roger

--
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand@nhh.no
and: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of
Gdansk, al. Mar. J. Pilsudskiego 46, PL-81 378 Gdynia, Poland.