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RCS file: htdocs/gcc-4.6/porting_to.html
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+ <html>
+
+ <head>
+ <title>GCC 4.6 Release Series — Porting to the New Tools</title>
+ </head>
+
+ <body>
+ <h1>GCC 4.6 Release Series<br />Porting to the New Tools</h1>
+
+ <p>
+ The GCC 4.6 release series differs from previous GCC releases in more
+ than the usual list
+ of <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.6/changes.html">new
+ features</a>. Some of these changes are a result of bug fixing, and
+ some old behaviors have been intentionally changed in order to support
+ new standards, or relaxed in standards-conforming ways to facilitate
+ compilation or runtime performance. Some of these changes are not
+ visible to the naked eye, and will not cause problems when updating
+ from older GCC versions.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ However, some of these changes are visible, and can cause grief to
+ users porting to GCC 4.6. This document is an effort to identify major
+ issues and provide clear solutions in a quick and easily-searched
+ manner. Additions and suggestions for improvement are welcome.
+ </p>
+
+ <h3>C language issues</h3>
+
+ <h4>New warnings for unused variables and parameters</h4>
+
+ <p>
+ The behavior of <code>-Wall</code> has changed and now includes the
+ new warning flags <code>-Wunused-but-set-variable</code> and
+ (with <code>-Wall
+ -Wextra</code>) <code>-Wunused-but-set-parameter</code>. This may
+ result in new warnings in code that compiled cleanly with previous
+ versions of GCC.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For example,
+ </p>
+
+ <pre>
+ void fn (void)
+ {
+ int foo;
+ foo = bar (); /* foo is never used. */
+ }
+ </pre>
+
+ <p>
+ Gives the following diagnostic:
+ </p>
+
+ <pre>
+ warning: variable ‘foo’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
+ </pre>
+
+ <p> Although these warnings will
+ not result in compilation failure, often <code>-Wall</code> is used in
+ conjunction with <code>-Werror</code> and as a result, new warnings
+ are turned into new errors.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ To fix, first see if the unused variable or parameter can be removed
+ without changing the result or logic of the surrounding code. If not,
+ annoate it with <code>__attribute__((__unused__))</code>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>As a workaround, remove <code>-Werror</code> until the new warnings
+ are fixed, or for conversion warnings
+ add <code>-Wno-unused-but-set-variable</code>
+ or <code>-Wno-unused-but-set-parameter</code>.
+ </p>
+
+ <h4>Strict overflow warnings</h4>
+
+ <p>
+ Using the <code>-Wstrict-overflow</code> flag
+ with <code>-Werror</code> and optmization flags above <code>-O2</code>
+ may result in compile errors when using glibc optimizations
+ for <code>strcmp</code>.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For example,
+ </p>
+
+ <pre>
+ #include <string.h>
+ void do_rm_rf (const char *p) { if (strcmp (p, "/") == 0) return; }
+ </pre>
+
+ <p>
+ Results in the following diagnostic:
+ </p>
+
+ <pre>
+ error: assuming signed overflow does not occur when changing X +- C1 cmp C2 to X cmp C1 +- C2 [-Werror=strict-overflow]
+ </pre>
+
+ <p>
+ To work around this, use </code>-D__NO_STRING_INLINES</code>.
+ </p>
+
+ <h3>C++ language issues</h3>
+
+ <h4>Header dependency changes</h4>
+
+ <p>
+ Many of the standard C++ library include files have been edited to no
+ longer include <cstddef> to get <code>namespace std</code>
+ -scoped versions of <code>size_t</code> and <code>ptrdiff_t</code>.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ As such, C++ programs that used the macros <code>NULL</code>
+ or <code>offsetof</code> without including <cstddef> will no
+ longer compile. The diagnostic produced is similar to:
+ </p>
+
+ <pre>
+ error: 'ptrdiff_t' does not name a type
+ </pre>
+
+ <pre>
+ error: 'size_t' has not been declared
+ </pre>
+
+ <pre>
+ error: 'NULL' was not declared in this scope
+ </pre>
+
+ <pre>
+ error: there are no arguments to 'offsetof' that depend on a template
+ parameter, so a declaration of 'offsetof' must be available
+ </pre>
+
+ <p>
+ Fixing this issue is easy, just include <cstddef>.
+ </p>
+
+ <h3>Java issues</h3>
+
+ <h3>Links</h3>
+
+ <p>
+ Jakub Jelinek, <a href="http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-February/148523.html">GCC 4.6 related common package rebuild failures (was Re: mass rebuild status)</a>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Matthias Klose, <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/02/msg00012.html">prepare to fix build failures with new GCC versions</a>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Jim Meyering, <a href="http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-March/149355.html">gcc-4.6.0-0.12.fc15.x86_64 breaks strcmp?</a>
+ </p>
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