GCC, Mac OS X & the future

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

Dan Knapp:

> On the other hand, Mac OS X Lion comes out sometime
> in July, so we don't really have a lot of time to do this if we don't
> want to leave Mac users unable to build.  

The lack of time is precisely why I proposed to use gcc-4.2 as a quick fix.

Besides, I am not so much worried about not being able to build GHC, but that the binaries will break.  Hence, I would like to get the gcc-4.2 into the soon to be released GHC 7.2.

>>>> If we could move to clang (on OS X) that would be ideal, but as I wrote above I seriously doubt that Apple will entirely remove gcc (at least not before whatever cat comes after Lion).  So, for the time being, and until we can use clang, I think it would be wise to use 'gcc-4.2' as a default on OS X (instead of 'gcc', which appears to morph into llvm-gcc soon).  If we do that for GHC 7.2, then GHC 7.2 won't break once Apple flips the sym link over.
> 
> Doesn't exist under that name on Lion.  You have to reference it by
> its full name which includes the architecture.  

I am pretty sure, I only used 'gcc-4.2' without the entire path to build the dev version with a tweaked GHC 7.0.3.  I'll double check that I didn't add an extra sym link or so.

> And I obviously have
> no information on this score, but I could see llvm-gcc going away
> before OS X 10.8 Asian Leopard Cat (or whatever), given that it is
> both deprecated by upstream and not really fully compatible with gcc
> in any event, so I really think moving to clang is the right approach.

clang doesn't do C++ and Objective-C++ well enough yet.  So, Apple will have to keep gcc around for a while longer.

Manuel