
PCC builds OpenBSD kernel (4.6 -current) - Fixnum
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20091228231142
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ams6110
It would be interesting to see how kernels compiled with pcc and gcc compare,
size-wise and performance-wise.

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old-gregg
I am curious: what is it about GCC that BSD folks want to get rid of it so
bad? I don't really follow GCC development, but on a multiple occasions I've
heard people wishing there was something else.

I've used C component of it and it was fine. Their C++ implementation is
lacking compared to Visual C++ (especially in generated code size and
template-related error messages). What else do people dislike about it?

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mstevens
BSD people tend to like BSD licensed things.

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bensummers
I think it's more the bugs, which tend to show up in kernel code, and the
ability to extend the compiler with security features, which is difficult in
the rather hairy gcc code. OpenBSD used a custom gcc 2.95 derived compiler for
ages because of bug fixes and their security extensions.

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stevan
An other problem is when GCC drops architecture support -- say some old arch
which Linux doesn't run on but which the BSDs do -- then the BSDs are forced
to maintain multiple old versions of GCC...

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ajross
Which architectures are those? And this is a FreeBSD announcement, which has a
much more limited port list than NetBSD.

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silentbicycle
Here are the hardware platforms that OpenBSD runs on
(<http://openbsd.org/plat.html>). Not as many as NetBSD, but several.

Porting a program that was written primarily with (say) i386 Debian Linux in
mind to other platforms is a great way to find bugs due to incorrect
assumptions. They may be asymptomatic on systems with 32-bit processors, the
same endian-ness, etc., but they're just lying dormant. Patches from porting
and the OpenBSD security audits are contributed upstream, too.

