Upgrading gcc and glibc (agian) <OT>

[Collins Richey]

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:25:43 +0100
Geoff <capsthorne at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[ most of discussion snipped ]

> ... In particular I have read that
> gcc 2.x and 3.x are C++ binary incompatible.  I may be wrong (which is
> why I am asking questions), but I understand this to mean that I may,
> for example, have C++ lib.foo on my system compiled under 2.x,
> together with applications compiled and dynamically linked against it.
>  Now I install gcc 3.x and try
> to compile some new application.  It won't compile (or maybe run?)
> against lib.foo because of the incompatibility, so I recompile lib.foo
> with 3.x. Now my existing applications won't link dynamically to
> lib.foo, so I have to recompile them.  In itself this is not a very
> big deal - but I can imagine having an entertaining time tracking down
> problems in cases where there may be multiple dependencies.

Yes, you are likely to encounter all of the above, and no, there is no
quick fix.  I do have a permanent solution to offer:  install gentoo.  I
have nothing against LFS - a perfectly fine distro, and a good learning
experience, but using LFS means that you must become your own dependancy
wizard (time and again).  I'm basically lazy.  Although it is a matter
of reading interest to know that package A depends upon B that
depends upon libs D E F which may in turn break package G etc., I don't
want to deal with that myself. For that work, I've hired a world wide
team of subject matter experts at a very reasonable price (namely
zippo): the gentoo development team.

My last install (probably ever, except for experimentation) was about 2
1/2 years ago. Now my gentoo stable system is up to GCC 3.2.3 and glibc
2.3.2-r1 which is leading but not bleeding edge.  During that time I've
seen at least four new releases of RH, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. to cope with
new functionality, and I'm sure LHS has had at least one release. 
Meanwhile, my system has been reliably and incrementally upgraded as new
functionality is tested and offered by gentoo.  Gentoo offers new
releases, too, but these are only needed for new installs.  Existing
users get the new functionality gradually.

It will take you about a week to put up a complete system and a little
longer to get used to the unique things in gentoo, but you'll never need
to wipe clean and uprade your system again, nor will you need to worry
much about dependancies.  At least 90% of the packages you may be
interested in have a gentoo ebuild available.  Any others you can
install manually in /usr/local or /opt and worry about the dependancies
yourself.

Good luck.

-- 
Collins Richey - Denver Area
if you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the 
worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.