Linus Weighs in on Red Hat 7 Compiler Issues

From the Linux kernel mailing list:

Subject: Re: Signal 11
Date: 14 Dec 2000 11:11:28 -0800
From: torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Quite frankly, anybody who uses RedHat 7.0 and their broken compiler
 for _anything_ is going to have trouble.

I don't know why RH decided to do their idiotic gcc-2.96 release (it
certainly wasn't approved by any technical gcc people - the gcc
 people were upset about it too), and I find it even more surprising
 that they apparently KNEW that the compiler they were using was
 completely broken. They included another (non-broken) compiler, and
 called it "kgcc".

"kgcc" stands for "kernel gcc", apparently because (a) they realised
that a miscompiled kernel is even worse than miscompiling some random
user applications and (b) gcc-2.96 is so broken that it requires
 special libraries for C++ vtable chunks handling that is different,
 so the _working_ gcc can only be used with programs that do not need
 such library support.  Namely the kernel.

In case it wasn't obvious yet, I consider RedHat-7.0 to be basically
unusable as a development platform, and I hope RH downgrades their
compiler to something that works better RSN.  It apparently has
 problems compiling stuff like the CVS snapshots of X etc too (and
 obviously, anything you compile under gcc-2.96 is not likely to work
 anywhere else except with the broken libraries).

Related Stories:

• LinuxProgramming: Open (and Free) Lessons From Red Hat's gcc Situation(Oct 16, 2000)
• Linux comes to a crossroads(Oct 13, 2000)
• Who Else Released GCC 2.96?(Oct 13, 2000)
• Red Hat Responds to Quality Allegations(Oct 09, 2000)