On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 14:25 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 07:29:22PM +0000, Mike Hearn wrote:
I really, really hope that the line about GCC breaking the C++ ABI again in 4.2 is wrong. How can anybody ever take them credibly if they break their promises not once, not twice, but three times?
It looks increasingly likely that a stable C++ ABI will never happen. Combined with the lack of proper ELF scoping at the symbol level, this makes using C++ in any form on Linux, even like how Inkscape does it, fundamentally unreliable.
This came up in the Desktop Architects' Meeting. Dan Kegel insisted that the gcc folks have made a firm promise not to break the C++ ABI any more. He sounded pretty confident about this, and he seems to be a the sort of guy you can take at his word. I guess we'll see, but this gave me some confidence about it.
If Dan Kegel said so, I'd also be inclined to believe it. He's also done a lot of work with GCC. Perhaps that is also because I want to believe that the GCC folks wouldn't screw us again by changing the ABI :) The GNOME folks have committed to ABI stability, I guess this might be a limitation in getting any of the -mm packages in mainline GNOME.
--Ted