Re: upgrading GCC 4.1 branch

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 01:33:57AM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
 > > We could also write a new C frontend for LLVM without too much
 > > trouble.  The major problem is C++ frontends.
 > 
 > What do we have that needs C++?  I know I've seen it run in
 > builds-of-the-world, but it's awfully tedious to winkle out everything
 > it's used for - aside from C++ support itself (libstdc++ et al), the
 > first thing I see is groff....

In base? groff is the biggest issue, because it's big and messy and
sane people don't want to go near it. There are a few other things
though, e.g. atf, and also apparently bits of openssl, wpa_supplicant,
and sys/arch/hpc/stand/hpcboot.

But realistically there are enough C++ things in pkgsrc that if
there's no C++ compiler in base, there will always be one installed in
/usr/pkg, which doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

Convincing the world to migrate onward from C++ is an option too, in
the long run, but that requires first inventing a credible migration
path.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost