gcc versions following upgrade 6.3 >7.0

[David Southwell]

On Tuesday 22 July 2008 08:16:38 Garrett Cooper wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 01:07:53AM -0700, David Southwell wrote:
> >
> > The "base system" does not add anything to the ports/pkg database.  The
> > reason you have gcc 4.1.3 and gcc 4.2.5 on your machine is because some
> > other port/package depended/depends on them.  pkg_info -R will solve
> > that mystery.
> >
> > As I said before: some ports/packages may require a newer (or older)
> > version of GCC, in which case, you'll end up with two (or more) versions
> > of gcc on your system -- one in the base and one (or more) managed via
> > ports.
> >
> > Regardless of what Garrett and others say about how multiple compilers
> > on a system "works great", I do not advocate it.  There are many catches
> > which can/will surprise you down the road, especially with regards to
> > library linking order, symbol versioning, and a couple other things.
> > I'm sorry, but in my eyes it's risky behaviour.  We've been down this
> > road before back when perl was in the base system, for similar reasons.
>
> The complication and mess stems from the fact that you'll need to
> compile components using an absolute prefix to the compiler or have a
> script which manages gcc and the binutils as a series of symlinks
> (Gentoo Linux does that).
>
> Not all projects unfortunately have wizened up to the fact that
> keeping something cross-compile safe is the best way to go so things
> may fail unless you have robust compile tools scripts to help manage
> everything.
>
> Cheers,
> -Garrett

Thanks guys this has been very interesting discussion. I have learnt quite a 
bit.

David