As Hasso Tepper pointed out, having GCC 4.4 in DragonFly is unique to DragonFly. Systems like pkgsrc don’t work due to the changes in headers and etc. between gcc 4.2 and 4.4, and since no other BSD uses gcc 4.4, the fixes would all have to come from DragonFly (and be backward compatible). This is unlikely to change in the near term, since this newer version of gcc is being refused due to the V3 GNU Public License, not a technical issue. It’ll stay in DragonFly for now.
However, you can specifically exclude it and speed up buildworlds with the new NO_GCC44 option. It’s also possible to use NO_GCC34 in make.conf to keep the old version of gcc from building, for those who don’t like to wait.
Hm,
so all the other *BSDs try hard to keep GPLv3 stuff out of their system, but DragonFly imported GCC 4.4…
So is that GPLv3 license really that evil? Or does DragonFly not care about the risks (well there must be some, otherwise gplv3’d software would be in free/net/openbsd)
PS: anyway, I’d rather like to see clang or pcc mature and GCC kissed bye bye :-)
I think everyone would like to see clang/llvm/pcc replace gcc. It’s difficult, though, as gcc’s been the only choice for so long.
It takes a lawyer to figure out what the GPLv3 affects. I’m not one. As long as it doesn’t encumber BSD-licensed code, it shouldn’t hurt. I imagine other projects are playing it safe. It may be worth looking up the debate to see if there was a decisive legal fact involved.