FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: Open BeOS

["Nathan Whitehorn" <nathanw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>     I noticed the gcc with BeOS5Max distro is now rather old.  Has
>     anyone tried the latest gcc3.3.1 and binutils 2.14 ?  Are there
>     patches that were needed to be applied?  (I just used ver
>     2.9-beos-991026, which seems to be egcs version).
> 
> 
> Ok... non-dev, normally lurker, here, so correct me if I'm wrong.
> But IIRC, the reason for using the rather old gcc version is to stay 
> binary compatible.
> For some reason (don't ask me) the newer versions don't seem to 
> produce 
> binary compatible programs and such.

This is due to a revised C++ ABI in GCC >= 3. The new ABI is supposed 
to be compatible with multiple compilers, and supposedly offers a 
variety of benefits aside from compatibility as well. However, as a 
necessary consequence, it breaks compatibility with C++ symbols in 
binary files creating by earlier GCC versions.
-Nathan

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