[kde-solaris] Gentle Question

Stefan Teleman stefan.teleman at gmail.com
Mon May 5 15:09:07 CEST 2008


On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 1:55 AM, Kunal Deo <Kunal.Deo at sun.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi Stefan
>
>  Thanks for the reply. I wanted to know why GCC is not supported for KDE4.
> So far I have compiled everything except strigi and hope I will do that
> also.

There are several reasons:

1. For KDE4 on Linux (and even for KDE3), there are restrictions as to
which versions of GCC are supported -- some versions of GCC are known
to miscompile KDE.

If we start introducing additional complexities with supporting GCC on
Solaris, then we have to reconcile the GCC version restrictions on
Linux and FreeBSD with the GCC version restrictions on Solaris. Noone
has the time to determine which versions of GCC are OK across all 3
platforms.

2. GCC does not have a stable C++ ABI. GCC's C++ ABI has changed
several times between GCC releases, and simply stating "GCC is
supported" is misleading: only C++ ABI compatible versions of GCC
would be supported.

3. Sun PSARC rules require that any C++ software available in
Solaris/OpenSolaris, which exposes public API's, must be built with
Sun Studio, and with the Sun C++ ABI Version 5. PSARC/2002/348 (ICU)
is publicly available at opensolaris.org (the PSARC case which
enforces this requirement).

[1] and [2] simply introduce too much complexity. [3] is a hard
requirement: we must support Sun Studio.

You can still try to build KDE4 with GCC. However, you will run into
problems. There will be "unsupported GCC Version" problems, and there
is already C++ software in Solaris/OpenSolaris which has been built
with Sun Studio, and which is used by KDE4 (examples: PCRE, OpenEXR,
and more). Sun Studio C++ ABI and GCC C++ ABI are not compatible with
each other. You will not be able to link the already present C++
Solaris software with GCC.

--Stefan

-- 
Stefan Teleman
KDE e.V.
stefan.teleman at gmail.com


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