The race to GCC 3

[Mark J. Dulcey]

It looks like the move to GCC 3 is finally on. MandrakeSoft wins the race to the gate with LinuxMandrake 9.0, which can be downloaded now. (Packaged versions won't be available for a month, though.) Red Hat will follow on Monday with Red Hat Linux 8.0, and SuSE follows close behind with SuSE Linux 8.1, due October 7. All three include GCC 3.2 and kernel 2.4.19.

The UnitedLinux beta also uses those versions; therefore, so will the next releases from SCO/Caldera, TurboLinux, and Connectiva. Slackware is also working on a GCC 3.2 version. The only significant x86 distribution not checking in with GCC 3 support is Debian, which usually lags well behind in adopting new software. Distributions for other architectures will probably also lag, since GCC 3 hasn't been as well-tested on other processors yet.

Better get your own applications ready for GCC 3, because it's what everyone will be using soon. One unfortunate consequence is that all C++ code built with GCC 2.9 has to be rebuilt; the name mangling scheme changed in GCC 3, so GCC 2 binaries and GCC 3 libraries don't get along with each other.