[OpenIndiana-discuss] Why gcc 3.x?

[Alex Viskovatoff]

Hi Phil,

On Fri, 2011-09-23 at 00:52 -0400, Philip J. Robar wrote:
> I noted when I volunteered to help with a port recently that OpenIndia is moving from Oracle's compilers to gcc 3.x. (gcc 3.x inferred from the required software list given here: http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Building+with+oi-build.) While I think that I understand why moving away from Oracle is a good idea, I would like to know why a dead compiler, gcc 3.x, was chosen over gcc 4.x  or Clang. I don’t remember seeing this discussed anywhere, but since I don’t hang out in IRCs I may have missed it. Is there an archive or rationale that someone could point me to?
> 
> My personal choice would be Clang, given that it has Apple's complete weight behind it.

The plan is to make gcc 4.6 OpenIndiana's standard compiler. It has not
yet been built with OpenIndiana's native build system, so at present,
you will find it in the SFE repository http://pkg.openindiana.org/sfe/

clang is not an option at the moment since its C++ library, libc++, does
not build on Solaris. If you would like OpenIndiana to use clang, the
developers would more than welcome any efforts on your part to get
libc++ to build.

Regards,
Alex