GCC optimization bugs -- still there or a historic artifact?

Nikos Ntarmos ntarmos at ceid.upatras.gr
Sat Mar 13 11:23:26 PST 2004


Hi all.

There was a thread on the CFLAGS knob in make.conf in early Feb.'04
(the exact subject was "need help on CFLAGS in /etc/make.conf
please"), where some posters raised the issue of gcc optimization bugs
that supposedly manifest in optimization levels above -O2. The last
post on this subject was on Feb. 13th, though, and nothing has come up
ever since. AFAIK 5.2.1+ and -CURRENT have moved to gcc-3.3.3. Are
these issues still there?

I've been making my way around FreeBSD's and GCC's gnat and couldn't
find anything relevant. Ummm... Actually almost all relevant entries
in our gnat end with something like "bug the gcc guys for we're too
overwhelmed to look into gcc issues". The funny thing is there is no
entry in the gcc's gnat about optimization bugs in 3.3.3. As some very
specific person noted, "-O gets about an order of magnitude less
testing than -O2" by the gcc community.

This whole thing came up in the port-alpha at netbsd list, in a thread
about Compaq's C compiler (aka ccc) for linux/alpha (lang/compaq-cc in
our ports tree) and its status in NetBSD. The manpage for make.conf
states that the issues with levels >1 are even worse on alpha. Well,
gcc-3.3.3 is as fast as (if not faster than) ccc for optimization
levels above -O2, and can be used for a much wider part of the C/C++
source available out there. So the question is: are these gcc issues
still there or just a historic artifact left lurking around manpages
"just to be sure"?

\n\n

-- 
 Nikos "Noth" Ntarmos    | < ntarmos at ceid dot upatras dot gr >
 NetCINS Lab. @ C.E.I.D. | [ http://{noth,p2p}.ceid.upatras.gr/ ]
 U. of Patras - Greece   | ( 38.2594N, 21.7428E ) ( 1024D / CF95160A )


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