[NBLUG TALK] RedHat 7.0 issue

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2000 at 04:49:53PM -0700, Dustin Mollo wrote:
> If you install Red Hat 7, be sure to install the "kgcc" package and use it
> when building kernels. The gcc package in this distribution is a little too
> new to be used for this task (see this week's Distributions Page for more).
> 
> Has anyone here noticed this anyplace else, or even played with building a
> kernel under 7.0 yet?

*shrug*  No big surprises there.

For a while now, RedHat's been shipping with "gcc" and "egcs".  If you're
actually intending to either do meaningful/modern programming or compile
something with some good optimizations, "egcs" was the way to go.  Now
they've switched "egcs" over to being "gcc" and the old "gcc" over to being
"kgcc".  The Linux Kernel is weird and strange and has had a problem with
using newer versions of GCC for a long time now.  The version that's "kgcc"
is pretty much old enough to only be useful for compiling the kernel, and
nothing else.


Machine with RedHat 6.1 (I've been meaning to upgrade it -- it'll probably
get 6.2 soon):

$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/egcs-2.91.66/specs
gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)

$ egcs -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/egcs-2.91.66/specs
gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)

$ kgcc
bash: kgcc: command not found


Machine with RedHat 7 (I just upgraded):

$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/2.96/specs
gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.0)

$ egcs -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-glibc21-linux/egcs-2.91.66/specs
gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)

$ kgcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-glibc21-linux/egcs-2.91.66/specs
gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)


Hm...  That's interesting.  Looks like in RH7 "egcs" comes in the
"compat-egcs" package and is really just a way to get to "kgcc".

Basically, they've given the most recent version of gcc that they felt was
appropriate for regular compilation and then a separate package for
compiling the kernel, since very few people would be happy with the version
of gcc old enough to compile the kernel for anything else.
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