Hi,
> Please can someone explain to me the difference between EGCS compilers
> and non-EGCS ones? The little info given in dselect is not very
> informative.
EGCS is the Experimental GNU Compiler System. It is on a slightly faster
development track then GCC 2.8.1, for example. The EGCS project was
intended to speed up and improve GNU compiler development since
development was very slow and seemed to be stagnant before gcc-2.8 was
release. However, while the EGCS compilers tend to be very stable, they
are still experimental. If you like, you can sort of think of the EGCS
compilers as gcc/g++ 2.9.x, sort of :). G77 is also part of the EGCS
suite, in addition to an implementation of the standard C++ library.
Debian currently uses EGCS C++ and g77 as its default C++ and FORTRAN
compilers since they tend to be better then the "standard" versions of
the compilers. On the other hand, Debian still uses gcc 2.7.2.3 as its
default C compiler since the 2.0.x Linux kernels make assumptions about
the way the C compiler optimizes. These assumptions no longer work when
using the EGCS C compiler, which is why the current 2.0.x kernels
shouldn't be compiled with EGCS gcc (egcc package).
Take a look at:
http://egcs.cygnus.com
for additional information.
I hope that this helps.
-Ossama
