Upgrading gcc on FreeBSD 4.11

Shaun freebsd at shaunc.com
Fri Feb 13 23:29:18 PST 2009


Thanks Tim! 

I'm aware that 4.x has been EOL'd for a long time. 

This particular machine is tracking RELENG_4_11. Of course I'd love to
upgrade, but I have no physical access. I've researched the potential
paths from 4.11 to 5.x to 6.x, and while there are some success stories,
there are horror stories as well. I'm not confident enough to attempt it
remotely. I can get IPKVM, but this is a personal machine without any
sort of HA requirements. It's not worth the hassle or expense to build
out a new box and restore the backups until the current hardware fails.

FWIW: The reason I was wanting to upgrade gcc was to get the
/usr/ports/net-mgmt/darkstat package installed. Trying to install it on
4.11 gave me an error that stdint.h didn't exist. Since my original post,
I have found a viable workaround, by symlinking inttypes.h to stdint.h.

I appreciate your quick answer, and for anyone else following this
thread, I no longer have a need to upgrade gcc. Sage, if you will.

Thanks again, Tim!

Shaun

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:58:38 -0700
Tim Judd <tajudd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 00:00 -0600, Shaun wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > One of my machines is running FreeBSD 4.11. It's a bit confused about
> > its current incarnation of gcc:
> > 
> > [shaun at agaliarept lang]$ pkg_info | grep gcc
> > gcc-3.4.6_3,1       GNU Compiler Collection 3.4
> > [shaun at agaliarept lang]$ gcc -v
> > Using builtin specs.
> > gcc version 2.95.4 20020320 [FreeBSD]
> > 
> > Another of my machines, which runs FreeBSD 6.4, has gcc 3.4.6:
> > 
> > [shaun at falwell shaun]$ pkg_info | grep gcc
> > [shaun at falwell shaun]$ gcc -v
> > Using built-in specs.
> > Configured with: FreeBSD/i386 system compiler
> > Thread model: posix
> > gcc version 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
> > 
> > Is it safe to install one of the newer gcc ports on FreeBSD 4.11? I've
> > had this machine for three years; I don't recall ever upgrading the
> > compiler, although pkg_info seems to think that I did, or at least
> > attempted to. I'm wondering if there are any risks involved in going
> > from gcc 2.95 to, say, 3.4.6. Typically I'm happy to pull the latest
> > stable of just about anything, but the compiler is a different story.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Shaun
> 
> FreeBSD 4.x has not been supported for ports for a long time.
> 
> Ports are guaranteed to work for the current releases of freebsd and
> -CURRENT only.
> 
> Using, or trying, to install anything on 4.x anymore is a gamble.  You
> should upgrade.
> 
> There was a tag you used to be able to use for 4.x port installs, but I
> bet that tag hasn't been updated in forever...
> 
> tag=RELEASE_4_11_0
> see: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.11R/schedule.html
> dated Jan/8/2005
> 
> 
> With the above tag, and an updated ports tree, i can recommend
> installing packages (if the tarballs are still on the internet).
> Without that tag, i don't recommend it.




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