gcc vs. commercial C compiler (Sun's)

[Sean Fagan]

In article <286 at proton.UUCP> proton!nusbaum at ucrmath.ucr.edu (R. James Nusbaum) writes:
>Does anyone have any thoughts on the use of gcc (a relatively new
>compiler as compilers go) vs. using Sun's C compiler in a medical
>software project where software failure could cause loss of life?

I forwarded this to Richard Stallman, and he asked me to post this in reply:

---- Begin rms.repl ----
I don't think that a 20% performance difference would outweight
any danger of unreliability in software that people's lives depend on.

GCC is probably still somewhat less reliable than the Sun C compiler.
However, we are making reliability a high priority now, and I hope
this will cease to be so in the next few versions.
---- End rms.repl ----

My, personal, opinion would be to try both (unless you had to pay for the
Sun compiler, in which case you should decide *before* you get it), and try
running reliability tests on it.  Gcc *is* buggy, true, but Sun doesn't let
me look at their bug reports (you know, the ones that are now into 32-bits
for identification?), so I can't compare it from that point.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
seanf at sco.UUCP   |  the master calls a butterfly."  -- Richard Bach
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.