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GCC 5.1 released

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Re: GCC 5.1 released

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered about 'volatile'. Its not really meant for that - but maybe its enough to trigger 'hands off'.

Practically speaking, 'volatile' has used for that pretty much since its inception.

Yep, even though it really shouldn't be.

Volatile has... problems. It was meant more for mem-mapped IO than thread safety.

And it's too powerful at the same time, as in there are a number of optimizations that are safe in the typical use cases of volatile that cannot be done to volatile variables.

Re: GCC 5.1 released

#52
Took a little longer than I'd hoped but GCC explorer now has support for GCC 5.1 : https://gcc.godbolt.org

It doesn't support LTO as yet due to the way it works so some of the juicier optimisations aren't visible. But you still get a chance to play about with the quality of the code generator.

Re: GCC 5.1 released

#53
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem I have with keeping `-Wall` is that it's misleading. But, other than that, I don't mind keeping it around so long as there is an option that enables all warnings. And since 5.1 includes a few more fancy new warnings, it'd be great to see those added into this hypothetical `-Weverything` as well. But, the issue on their bugtracker for inclusion of this feature was opened during 4.8 and still hasn't be…

Misleading options and unnecessary inconsistencies should be frowned upon. They make it harder to learn a system and learning a system should be made as easy as possible. I'd consider consistency in regards to option availability, effect and syntax a top priority.

Learning a system is important, but it doesn't always warrant breaking existing systems. If GCC were to reject the -Wall argument, many projects which have used it for years would break and now need an extra GCC version-check embedded into their build tools.

The gcc manpage would be an appropriate place for developers to document any preferred replacement for -Wall, for new projects. Anyone learning build tools is likely to hit the manpages, and anyone who learns-by-google is still likely to see it in HTML ports of the manpages.

Re: GCC 5.1 released

#54
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misleading options and unnecessary inconsistencies should be frowned upon. They make it harder to learn a system and learning a system should be made as easy as possible. I'd consider consistency in regards to option availability, effect and syntax a top priority.

Learning a system is important, but it doesn't always warrant breaking existing systems. If GCC were to reject the -Wall argument, many projects which have used it for years would break and now need an extra GCC version-check embedded into their build tools. The gcc manpage would be an appropriate place for developers to document any preferred replacement for -Wall, for new projects. Anyone learning build tools is li…

The libre and open software community is way too considerate with existing users. Combine that with anarchistic development and you get the inconsistent and complex mess we ended up with.

Debian is _horrible_. And it will never be good without radical changes, possibly including changing options and syntax of commands, breaking API's and ABI's and breaking every running instance of it.

Just look at basic commands. It's 'cp ifile ofile' but 'dd if=ifile of=ofile'. This one-of-many wart has to go, exiled together with all its siblings.

Common shell languages like sh and it's children are nightmarish abominations, unintuitive and unsafe - they deserve to die in flames.

We need change. A change for the better; for intuitiveness, for elegance, conformity, consistency, for learnability. Until then, Windows and Apples OS will stand a chance.

Intelligent design is what we need, not only evolution.

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