Older blog entries for halcy0n (starting at number 37)

A lot of people are asking me when gcc-4.0 is going to go into ~arch. The answer: soon :) I want to get it in as soon as possible, but I also want to make sure it is not going to break on common packages. If you want to help out, go check out the gcc4 tracker bug. If something doesn't have a patch yet, it would help if you tried to find one or came up with one that we could use.

Okay, so gcc-4.0 isn't in ~arch yet, but we are getting there. If you want to help out, check out the bugs that bug #117481 depends on. There are a few packages that I consider "major", and I would like to see fixed before moving forward. I'll see what I can do about getting those issues fixed as soon as I can.

x86:

The other day fox2mike expressed interest in joining the x86 team as an AT, and he's also a doc dev. What luck for us, since now we have someone to help me write up some documentation for the x86 team :) We should have a draft of the AT documentation done soon (probably this coming week). Hopefully after that I can update the project page and get some new information up on there.

other stuff:

I just added Delta to the tree. Its a really cool application for reducing "interesting" input files. I personally use it for reducing testcases for GCC ICEs, which it has done very well for me. I'm sure there's about 5 other people out there that will find this useful, so, go crazy :)

Well, I added glibc-2.3.6-r2 to the tree tonight, which I will keyword as ~x86 in the next few days so long as no problems come up. After that, I'll make sure all major apps are compiling fine with gcc-4.0.2-r3 (which they are currently), and then we can finally start getting gcc-4.0 into ~arch. So, if you want to jump the gun and start testing, just unmask the latest glibc and gcc ebuilds. If you find a package that doesn't compile and there isn't a bug open, please create a bug with the error message and the output of `emerge info` (a patch would also be awesome, but not required :) ). Also please set the bug you create to be a blocker of bug #117482.

x86:

Well, I think the x86 team is working out well, but we could still use some more arch testers to help out and improve the testing we are doing. If you want to help out with Gentoo and you aren't sure how to start with doing so, this may be a way for you. Just come talk to us on IRC (we don't bite) in #gentoo-x86 on irc.freenode.net. (Yes, this sounds like a bad advertisement, but hey...whatever works :P )

Well, gcc-4.0.2-r2 is now in the tree, so go test it and try to break it for me. I got good feedback from people that tested it before I put it in the tree, so it should be better than -r1 was. Let me know via email, irc, bugs.gentoo.org, etc if it sucks. If its working good, I'd also like to hear about that, just don't post it on bugs.gentoo.org, not really the appropriate medium ;)

Also, I've been going through all of the bugs that are assigned/CC'd to toolchain@ and trying to clean them up to get back to a managable number. A lot of them are old stale bugs that no longer are an issue due to newer stable versions of gcc, binutils, etc. If I close your bug and its still valid, just reopen it and I'll look into it closer. If I see that no one reported that its still a problem with the current set of stable packages, and I can't test it quickly, or it looks like it should be fixed, I'm closing it asking for feedback. It doesn't mean that we are ignoring the issue, but obviously a lot of people have not been impacted by it or we'd be hearing stuff everyday :)

x86

Thanks to those of you that responded to my last request for ATs for x86. Its nice to know that people actually read my ramblings on here, and that there are people willing to help. Hopefully we keep getting new people so we can concentrate on improving QA in other ways than just ensuring proper testing for packages before moving them to stable. I have no idea on what we could do yet, but I'm sure people have good, and bad, opinions on that already.

Well, classes are over for the semester, which means I have more time to work on things now. First thing to do is get gcc-4.0.2-r2 put together and in the tree. I just backported a patch from gcc-4.1 to fix an ICE that was introduced by another patch I had added. Hopefully when I wake up later I see that all of the `emerge -e world`s I started have successfully completed. I'll give it a few days before putting it out just to make sure there are no code generation regressions (doubtful, but possible). This version will hopefully be added to ~arch soon after it is put in the tree. Most of the tree seems to be gcc-4.0 safe, so the transition shouldn't be too bad.

x86

We are still looking for arch testers (and possibly if you are good, arch dev :) ). Let me know via email if you are interested in helping out, or stop by #gentoo-x86 on Freenode. The more people we get to help out means the less work everyone else has to do. :)

Well, thanks to wolf31o2 and amne, we have a nice gcc migration doc. Thanks to that, I could mark gcc-3.4.4-r1 stable on x86 and hope to avoid most of the issues people are going to run into. Of course, this assumes people will go and read the doc, which I know isn't going to happen at first, but atleast we have somewhere to point them to :) Also, tomorrow is Gentoo Bug Day, so I hope to try and get some people to help me test some of the bugs that have been assigned to x86 for awhile, and are starting to rot.

gcc:

Well, now that gcc-3.4 is stable on x86, that means I can start to push for gcc-4.0 to get into ~arch :) We want to make another patchset before we think about doing that though. In my testing, I haven't run into any major packages that don't compile anymore, and have only been getting positive feedback from people running it. I'm sure there are still a few apps out there that are broken, and I either haven't found out about, or are going to take a little time to fix properly. Let me know if you run into problems via email or IRC so I can look into them.

Well, contrary to popular believe (aka Slashdot articles), gcc-4.1 is not out yet. I just added a new snapshot to the tree for everyone to test, and included an upstream patch that fixes profiledbootstrap on amd64. There have been some people already contributing patches to fix up packages so they compile with gcc-4.1, which is awesome.

x86:

I've also been working a lot on stuff with the x86 arch team. We are still in need of more arch devs and testers. If you'd like to help out, send me an email (halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org) or come join us in #gentoo-x86 on Freenode. I'm sure we'll be able to find something for you to do. We'll probably start working on getting some documentation together for what we expect people to do when testing an application to be marked stable on x86, just so everyone is on the same page, and we can hopefully cut down any possible breakage that may creep in.

Okay, so I haven't updated this in a long time. gcc-4.0.2-r1 seems to be pretty stable for most people. We are going to be pushing out a new revision soon that should fix a few more issues that people have been running into. Hopefully in a few more weeks we'll start getting ready to move it into ~arch since most of the tree seems to support it now. If you are running into any bugs, send me an email or assign a bug to me and I'll look into it.

I also added the gcc-4.1 snapshots back to the tree. If you were curious, I added that die into the ebuild because I got sick of people reporting bugs to us that should be going upstream. If you want to use gcc-4.1, I'm assuming you know what you are doing and can file meaningful bugs upstream. :) There is a thread on the forums going for it already, so you can ask for help there. If you come up with a patch to fix a package, I would of course love to add it to the tree, and it would be great if you sent it upstream as well.

Well, I looked around online and it looks like someone already did my work for me :) Thanks to Robert Connolly, because I found the patches all put together from glibc CVS already on his ftp. The patches are in my overlay, or if you just want the gcc 4 patch I broke them out. I'm guessing this is similar to what 2.3.6 will be like when it is released. So far I have had no problems. If anyone could repeat successes or failures to me, I'd appreciate it. Just email me at my Gentoo address, halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org.

I wrote a PHP script awhile ago that I called PHPlog, and I've been using it to do some simple analysis of my web logs for my website. I've found that my New York City photos seem to be the most popular item on my website. Since April 1st, I've had 3715 people get to my website using the search term "new york city". I saw a sudden boom in traffic after one of my photos appeared on the first page of results on http://images.google.com for "new york city".

Here are some overall stats since April 1st:
Total Hits: 76904
Unique Hosts: 6202
Total Transfered: 1543.75MB

Right after GCC4 was released, I started getting hits to my blog because of me talking about Gentoo and GCC4. I've found it interesting to follow the popularity of things as I post them on my website.