What's the difference betwen GCC 4.0 and 3.4?

[Lee Braiden]

On Saturday 29 October 2005 17:57, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
> I hear that gcc-4.0 and gcc-3.4 are binary compatible so what are the
> improvements from 3.4 to 4.0. Thanks...

The c++ abi has changed, as far as I know.  Debian is currently completing a 
major recompile of many of its packages to match up with the new c++ abi.

AFAIR, the major improvement is that the code parser is now hand-written, more 
optimised, and more capable of optimising.  Also, it's capable of doing 
things that were previously limited, but are required by the latest language 
standards.  The actual generated binary code should be smaller and more 
efficient too.  All in all, well worth any teething troubles to implement, 
I'd say :)

-- 
Lee Braiden
http://www.DigitalUnleashed.com