Bob Proulx wrote:
Neil Ferguson wrote:
Can GCC 3.3 compile 64-bit binaries that work reliably on AMD64?
You might find it comforting to know that the Debian GNU/Linux port to
amd64 compiled almost all of the thousands of packages in Debian using
the gcc 3.3.5 compiler. (It's unofficial because Debian has yet to
include the port in their mainstream yet. That part is happening now.)
Thank you; that *is* good to know.
What would the minimum recommended version of GCC be? (I'd be curious to
know even if GCC 3.3 is OK, for my own historical interest.)
Of course as bug fixes and enhancements are made the best version
increases version number. So while 3.3 is probably okay depending
upon what you are doing that does not mean that bugs don't exist.
Version 3.4 is better and version 4.0 is better and so on and so on.
I understand.
Probably the best thing is to just push forward and see how it goes.
If this is your first push into 64-bit space then the biggest problems
will be type safety in your code.
It is our first push into 64-bit, and yes, you're right :)
I continued my investigation after posting to the list, and came across a
couple of small points that might be useful to anyone else faced with the
issue. First, the lowest version number of GCC recommended in the AMD
documentation was GCC 3.3.3. Link to "Compiler Usage Guidelines for 64-bit
Operating Systems on AMD64 Platforms":
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/32035.pdf
see pages 17 (64-bit mode) and 28 (32-bit mode). These sections contain
guidelines on useful compilation options and so forth.
There are also a couple of papers in the Proceedings of the GCC Developers
Summit 2003 which may be of interest - "Porting to 64-bit GNU/Linux Systems"
by Andreas Jaeger (pages 107-120) and "Porting GCC to the AMD64 Architecture"
by Jan Hubicka (pages 79-105). These used to be available here:
http://www.linux.org.uk/~ajh/gcc/gccsummit-2003-proceedings.pdf
but the link wasn't working when I tried it (I happen to have paper copies on
my desk).
Neil.
