gcc4: next release

[JonY]

On 7/7/2010 20:58, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 07, 2010 at 02:39:19PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> Oh, and, talking about /opt or /usr, I'd prefer the above /usr/mingw*
>> sysroot idea.  However, I don't like the idea in the least to keep
>> two different versions of w32api around.  It's one target, so we should
>> have one set of headers only.  Right?  Wrong?  None of that?
>
> Unfortunately, it sounds like we've stepped into the middle of a dispute
> between the mingw folks and the mingw64 folks.  Maybe the best thing for
> us to do would be to decide to use only one or the other but not both.
>
> cgf
>

Here are some of the technical issues.

The C startup ABI between the 2 is also different enough that linking 
from one compiler to another isn't recommended, though I haven't tried 
recently.

This is also true for C++, where mingw.org preference to dw2, but 
mingw-w64 uses sjlj for both 32bit and 64bit.

As for mingw-w64 headers API, it does not support anything lower than 
XP, Win2K is not supported, different from mingw.org's Win9X compatibility.

Compiler feature wise is also different, hence the "w64" vendor key to 
turn on some of GCC's features, especially the unicode C startup.

mingw-w64 is relatively new compared to mingw.org's history, so 
obviously the latter has a much larger user base.

For compatibility purposes, if we do have mingw-w64 toolchain, there 
should also be a separate toolchain for mingw.org, if we don't want to 
get bombarded with "Why does the new MinGW GCC not work?" questions.