9 ms·

GCC 4.8.0 released

133 points by hamidr 14y ago

mtanski 14y ago
With all these folks excited by gcc releases (and really the C++11 features) it would seam like there's lots of folks still using C++. However, I have the hardest time in the world recruiting good C++ engineers (here in NYC at least).
- joelthelion 14y ago
  What kind of things are you doing with C++? Also, what do you consider a "good C++ engineer"? I'm pretty sure I would fail a C++ interview requiring me to know trivia about obscure parts of the language, yet I do use C++ successfully almost every day.
  - qdog 14y ago
    Yep, our local c++ tough guy figures he's a 6/10 in c++ knowledge, and we're unsure if you can make it to 7/10. Yet, millions of instances of his code are still successfully running as we speak. I once had someone ask me if I was a c++ expert, I said no, did not get an interview. I guess I should have lied and hoped the questions they asked me fell in the realm of c++ I know.
  - mtanski 14y ago
    Sorry for being overly vague with the term "good". I guess I would break it down to 3 categories. 1. Solid understanding of CS concepts. You don't have to build a Red-Black tree in the interview (ugh) but you should know properties of self-balancing trees and when to use them. 2. Effective use of C++ . Not looking for C++ trivia here (or someone who memorized the C++ lite FAQ). But things like good practices when it comes to memory management, using templates, virtual destructors, functors (and operating / passing functions). 3. Good idea how things work under the hood. So concepts like atomic variable (why and when to use it), bit-packing data, avoiding branching in hot code paths, and allocation strategies (memory pools). Am I asking too much? I've found out that folks who have a solid grasp of CS, language and how things work under the hood can reason more complex things they don't know (yet). We're using C++ to build a relational database for storing lots of multi-dimensional time series data. We're leveraging Google's supersonic for execution (https://code.google.com/p/supersonic/ https://code.google.com/p/supersonic/). The other important pieces (like the IO subsystem, indexing, query planing, sharing & routing) we've built ourselves.
    - revelation 14y ago
      The problem is that there is a wide range of different coding styles, between "C with sanity" and "Boost.Spirit". You seem to lean more towards the C side, but that's not clear from the "C++ expert" label alone.
  - mtanski 14y ago
    I forgot to add that C++ is a big language so I doubt that anybody out there can hold all the corner cases in their head without going to documentation.
hamidr 14y ago
GCC 4.8 Release Series Changes, New Features, and Fixes | http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html GCC 4.8 release | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5386795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5386795
- shared4you 14y ago
  Did you even read the HN thread you've linked to? Everyone there clearly agreed that 4.8 was not released. EDIT: thanks hamidr for correcting me!
  - hamidr 14y ago
    Yes. http://gcc.gnu.org/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ News GCC 4.8.0 released [2013-03-22] GCC internals documentation [2013-01-23] The GCC Resource Center at IITB is providing documentation, tutorials and videos about GCC internals with support from the Government of India. ARM AArch64 support [2012-10-24] A port for AArch64, the 64-bit execution state in the ARMv8 architecture, has been contributed by ARM Ltd. IBM zEnterprise EC12 support [2012-10-10] Support for the latest release of the System z mainframe zEC12 has been added to the architecture back end. This work was contributed by Andreas Krebbel of IBM.
    - shared4you 14y ago
      Thanks, that's cool. I was looking at the mailing list only.
  - agwa 14y ago
    That thread was 5 days ago, at which time people agreed only a RC had been released, and that 4.8 would be released in about a week. As of now it appears 4.8 has either been released or is imminently about to be.
mpyne 14y ago
"As of this time no releases of GCC 4.8 have yet been made."
- mpyne 14y ago
  I can't edit my original but it was true when I posted it. Congrats to the GCC devs on another GCC release.
shared4you 14y ago
Once again, 4.8 is not yet out. It is "officially" released only when an announcement is sent to this mailing-list: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/ Even the 4.8 tarballs have not been uploaded to FTP servers: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/ Until then, let's wait. EDIT: Looks like the tarballs are being mirrored, and 4.8 is indeed out.
- hamidr 14y ago
  Agreed :) This one has them ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/
- agwa 14y ago
  At least some mirrors have the tarball: http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/sourceware.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ Someone on HN must really want gcc 4.8 to be released ;-)
- _delirium 14y ago
  http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/ http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/ has now been modified to say March 22, 2013 The GNU project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the release of GCC 4.8.0.
  - edwintorok 14y ago
    The announce mail is out too: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html
gre 14y ago
"Release History GCC 4.8.0 March 22, 2012 (changes, documentation)" 2013? Confusing...
- qompiler 14y ago
  cp gcc-4.7/index.html gcc-4.8/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ben0x539 14y ago
So how many times has gcc 4.8.0 left the solar system already? :)
cpr 14y ago
Interesting. Looks like they took Clang's excellent error reporting to heart.
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  Indeed. This is an example of a sane and healthy competition between two giants (or C/C++/ObjC oligarchs :D) that ends up benefiting the end consumer the most. I wish it worked the same way in all other sectors. The open source part is probably what makes it easier to stay "pure" in spirit, i.e. no under-the-counter fixing, no bullshit.
skybrian 14y ago
Doesn't say anything about Go changes. What are they?
- _delirium 14y ago
  There might be other changes under the hood, but the only thing that's changed in the gccgo manual from 4.7.2 to 4.8.0 is the addition of a new flag, -fgo-relative-import-path.
davidcuddeback 14y ago
This page shows the C++11 features that are added by each version of GCC, in case you're curious how C++11 support has changed from 4.7 to 4.8: http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html EDIT: I see that some of the C++11 changes are also listed on the change log (http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html), but that page seems to be missing the changes in concurrency support: bidirectional fences, memory model, `at_quick_exit`, and thread-local storage.
willvarfar 14y ago
-fsanitize=thread and -fsanitize=address !!!! :D
- zxcdw 14y ago
  Do elaborate.
  - aaronbrethorst 14y ago
    http://code.google.com/p/thread-sanitizer/wiki/CppManual http://code.google.com/p/thread-sanitizer/wiki/CppManual
shared4you 14y ago
Link to official announcement by Jakub: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html
z3phyr 14y ago
Off Topic Question: As a compiler (C++ compiler esp) slides through its versions, it gets better optimising features and every newer version can produce faster binaries. Can this cycle end? Or, will the cycle continue forever? (Like gcc 5 more efficient, gcc 6 even more efficient.....etc)
- iso8859-1 14y ago
  Consider the law of energy conservation. I'd regard performance the same way, that is, we get closer and closer to the optimum runtime for a given problem, but can never exceed it. For example you cannot solve a NP-complete problem in polynomial time or better. Standard C++ guarantees a lot in comparison to higher-level languages. So, C++ is constrained more than i.e. Haskell. When strong AI is achieved, I'd suppose you'd be able to achieve the optimum runtime for any given problem.

133 points by hamidr 14y ago

With all these folks excited by gcc releases (and really the C++11 features) it would seam like there's lots of folks still using C++. However, I have the hardest time in the world recruiting good C++ engineers (here in NYC at least).

joelthelion 14y ago
What kind of things are you doing with C++? Also, what do you consider a "good C++ engineer"? I'm pretty sure I would fail a C++ interview requiring me to know trivia about obscure parts of the language, yet I do use C++ successfully almost every day.
- qdog 14y ago
  Yep, our local c++ tough guy figures he's a 6/10 in c++ knowledge, and we're unsure if you can make it to 7/10. Yet, millions of instances of his code are still successfully running as we speak. I once had someone ask me if I was a c++ expert, I said no, did not get an interview. I guess I should have lied and hoped the questions they asked me fell in the realm of c++ I know.
- mtanski 14y ago
  Sorry for being overly vague with the term "good". I guess I would break it down to 3 categories. 1. Solid understanding of CS concepts. You don't have to build a Red-Black tree in the interview (ugh) but you should know properties of self-balancing trees and when to use them. 2. Effective use of C++ . Not looking for C++ trivia here (or someone who memorized the C++ lite FAQ). But things like good practices when it comes to memory management, using templates, virtual destructors, functors (and operating / passing functions). 3. Good idea how things work under the hood. So concepts like atomic variable (why and when to use it), bit-packing data, avoiding branching in hot code paths, and allocation strategies (memory pools). Am I asking too much? I've found out that folks who have a solid grasp of CS, language and how things work under the hood can reason more complex things they don't know (yet). We're using C++ to build a relational database for storing lots of multi-dimensional time series data. We're leveraging Google's supersonic for execution (https://code.google.com/p/supersonic/ https://code.google.com/p/supersonic/). The other important pieces (like the IO subsystem, indexing, query planing, sharing & routing) we've built ourselves.
  - revelation 14y ago
    The problem is that there is a wide range of different coding styles, between "C with sanity" and "Boost.Spirit". You seem to lean more towards the C side, but that's not clear from the "C++ expert" label alone.
- mtanski 14y ago
  I forgot to add that C++ is a big language so I doubt that anybody out there can hold all the corner cases in their head without going to documentation.

hamidr 14y ago

GCC 4.8 Release Series Changes, New Features, and Fixes | http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html GCC 4.8 release | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5386795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5386795

shared4you 14y ago
Did you even read the HN thread you've linked to? Everyone there clearly agreed that 4.8 was not released. EDIT: thanks hamidr for correcting me!
- hamidr 14y ago
  Yes. http://gcc.gnu.org/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ News GCC 4.8.0 released [2013-03-22] GCC internals documentation [2013-01-23] The GCC Resource Center at IITB is providing documentation, tutorials and videos about GCC internals with support from the Government of India. ARM AArch64 support [2012-10-24] A port for AArch64, the 64-bit execution state in the ARMv8 architecture, has been contributed by ARM Ltd. IBM zEnterprise EC12 support [2012-10-10] Support for the latest release of the System z mainframe zEC12 has been added to the architecture back end. This work was contributed by Andreas Krebbel of IBM.
  - shared4you 14y ago
    Thanks, that's cool. I was looking at the mailing list only.
- agwa 14y ago
  That thread was 5 days ago, at which time people agreed only a RC had been released, and that 4.8 would be released in about a week. As of now it appears 4.8 has either been released or is imminently about to be.

mpyne 14y ago

"As of this time no releases of GCC 4.8 have yet been made."

mpyne 14y ago
I can't edit my original but it was true when I posted it. Congrats to the GCC devs on another GCC release.

shared4you 14y ago

Once again, 4.8 is not yet out. It is "officially" released only when an announcement is sent to this mailing-list: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/ Even the 4.8 tarballs have not been uploaded to FTP servers: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/ Until then, let's wait. EDIT: Looks like the tarballs are being mirrored, and 4.8 is indeed out.

hamidr 14y ago
Agreed :) This one has them ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/
agwa 14y ago
At least some mirrors have the tarball: http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/sourceware.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-4.8.0/ Someone on HN must really want gcc 4.8 to be released ;-)
_delirium 14y ago
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/ http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/ has now been modified to say March 22, 2013 The GNU project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the release of GCC 4.8.0.
- edwintorok 14y ago
  The announce mail is out too: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html

gre 14y ago

"Release History GCC 4.8.0 March 22, 2012 (changes, documentation)" 2013? Confusing...

qompiler 14y ago
cp gcc-4.7/index.html gcc-4.8/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ben0x539 14y ago

So how many times has gcc 4.8.0 left the solar system already? :)

cpr 14y ago

Interesting. Looks like they took Clang's excellent error reporting to heart.

VeejayRampay 14y ago
Indeed. This is an example of a sane and healthy competition between two giants (or C/C++/ObjC oligarchs :D) that ends up benefiting the end consumer the most. I wish it worked the same way in all other sectors. The open source part is probably what makes it easier to stay "pure" in spirit, i.e. no under-the-counter fixing, no bullshit.

skybrian 14y ago

Doesn't say anything about Go changes. What are they?

_delirium 14y ago
There might be other changes under the hood, but the only thing that's changed in the gccgo manual from 4.7.2 to 4.8.0 is the addition of a new flag, -fgo-relative-import-path.

davidcuddeback 14y ago

This page shows the C++11 features that are added by each version of GCC, in case you're curious how C++11 support has changed from 4.7 to 4.8: http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html EDIT: I see that some of the C++11 changes are also listed on the change log (http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html), but that page seems to be missing the changes in concurrency support: bidirectional fences, memory model, `at_quick_exit`, and thread-local storage.

willvarfar 14y ago

-fsanitize=thread and -fsanitize=address !!!! :D

zxcdw 14y ago
Do elaborate.
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago
  http://code.google.com/p/thread-sanitizer/wiki/CppManual http://code.google.com/p/thread-sanitizer/wiki/CppManual

shared4you 14y ago

Link to official announcement by Jakub: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2013/msg00001.html

z3phyr 14y ago

Off Topic Question: As a compiler (C++ compiler esp) slides through its versions, it gets better optimising features and every newer version can produce faster binaries. Can this cycle end? Or, will the cycle continue forever? (Like gcc 5 more efficient, gcc 6 even more efficient.....etc)

iso8859-1 14y ago
Consider the law of energy conservation. I'd regard performance the same way, that is, we get closer and closer to the optimum runtime for a given problem, but can never exceed it. For example you cannot solve a NP-complete problem in polynomial time or better. Standard C++ guarantees a lot in comparison to higher-level languages. So, C++ is constrained more than i.e. Haskell. When strong AI is achieved, I'd suppose you'd be able to achieve the optimum runtime for any given problem.