LINUX TIPS AND TRICKS --- May 25, 2001

Published by ITworld.com -- changing the way you view IT
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Get Ready for GCC 3.0!
By Danny Kalev

As we all know, Open Source products don't have rigid 
deadlines. However, the tentative release of the new GCC 3.0 
compiler scheduled for June 15th is a significant leap in 
terms of compiler technology, language support, portability, 
and performance. This week, I will present the novelties and 
enhancements of the imminent GCC 3.0 compiler.

GCC 3.0 New Features
While GCC supports several languages, including Fortran, 
Objective C, and Java, its first and foremost usage is as a 
C/C++ compiler. In this regard, the development team has 
invested a great deal of work designing, implementing, 
testing, and bug fixing. The new version will support the 
C++ Standard Library properly. Up until now, essential 
components of the Standard Library were missing, such as the 
<locale> and <sstream> libraries, while other components of 
the C++ Standard Library have been supported only partially. 
This is going to change soon, as GCC 3.0 includes a brand 
new implementation of the Standard Library.

Another major change is a new Abstract Binary Interface (ABI). 
For this reason, no binary compatibility exists between GCC 3.0 
and older versions of compiled code. However, unlike previous 
releases, the ABI is stable and expects to remain unchanged in 
the following releases.

In terms of core-language features, the 3.0 release fixes some 
minor bugs and includes a newly written preprocessor. Tighter 
support of C99 is also expected, although the new release 
doesn't fully support the new C standard yet.

Regarding compilation technology, GCC 3.0 is expected to 
compile code faster; some tests showed it 40% faster than its 
predecessor. Compiling large amounts of code and applications 
that make extensive use of templates make this improvement much 
more noticeable -- an area that has been pretty neglected 
thus far.

Additional changes you'll find in GCC 3.0 include:

    * GCC 3.0 will offer better Java support. Unlike previous
      releases, the Java standard library should be included in
      the new release. Thus, users won't have to download
      it separately;
    * Apparently, GCC 3.0 will not support the Chill language
      anymore due to a lack of interest (and volunteers);
    * The creators of GCC 3.0 ensure that the generated code's
      quality is at least as good as its predecessor. In fact,
      it seems that the new release will be better in
      this regard.

For more information on GCC 3.0, visit the official GCC Web 
site at http://gcc.gnu.org.

About the author(s)
-------------------
Danny Kalev is a system analyst and software engineer with more 
than 10 years of experience, specializing in C++ and 
object-oriented analysis and design on various platforms 
including VMS, DOS, Windows, Unix, and Linux. His technical 
interests involve code optimization, networking, and 
distributed computing. He is also a member of the ANSI C++ 
standardization committee and the author of ANSI/ISO C++ 
Professional Programmer's Handbook (Que, 1999). Contact him at 
linuxnl@excite.com.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

GCC Development Tools
http://www.itworld.com/jump/lintps_nl/www.palmos.com/
dev/tech/tools/gcc

GNU Compilers on Win32
http://www.itworld.com/jump/lintps_nl/www.geocities.com/
Tokyo/Towers/6162/gcc.html

The Linux GCC HOWTO
http://www.itworld.com/jump/lintps_nl/www.linuxdoc.org/
HOWTO/GCC-HOWTO/
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