On Sep 4, 2007, at 13:26, Lawrence Crowl wrote:
On 8/31/07, Ken Raeburn <raeburn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Is the usual procedure, then, to just require that the application
builder consistently use the same compiler implementation for
everything?
Yes, though this is not as onerous as you might think.
That one I would think would be relatively easy. It's the vendor-
supplied libraries case I'm concerned about.
This would be particularly annoying if the library in
question were being provided by the OS vendor, and not always
downloaded and built by the application builder.
On systems with strong binary compatibility guarantees, shipping
binaries with an agreed upon base compiler is not terribly difficult.
Generally, there is one compiler associated with the OS that serves
as the reference compiler, and all others must conform. On
Windows, that compiler is Microsoft's. On Solaris, that compiler
is Sun's. On HPUX, that compiler is HP's.
If exceptions and such are as much of a problem as it sounds, I guess
they aren't doing very well at conforming?
On Linux, the binary
story is not as strong, but the compiler is GNU's.
I remember there being quite a mess around the pre-gcc-3 days because
of ABI changes in the GNU compilers, though I don't know if it
affected all libraries using C++ at all, or just those exposing use
of C++ in their APIs. Just the sort of thing I'd want to avoid....
Ken
