Intel compiler compiled Linux distro
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Void_Main Aug 04, 2004 9:37 AM EDT |
There may not be a single thing wrong with compiling a Linux distribution with a proprietary compiler and redistributing it but it does raise a couple of questions in my mind. I have not used Intel's compiler but I have often used proprietary compilers in the past. There is no guarantee that if you compile something with one compiler that it will compile on another without making a few changes. Of course if both compilers follow the standards, along with the code being compiled, then this shouldn't be an issue, but nothing is every perfect. In fact it's often the case that code that compiles with one version of GCC will not compile under a different version. So my point is, to get the Linux distribution to compile with the Intel compiler did any changes have to be made to the code to compile it with the Intel compiler? If so, in order to compile said Free software (GPLed) I would be required to have a proprietary compiler? Also, the binaries are going to be different (obviously if one performs better than the other then they are different). I guess supplying the source that produced that binary would satisfy the GPL, or would it? Again, I would have to have Intel's compiler before I could reproduce that binary with said source code. I have to assume that these questions were brought up and have been given a stamp of approval. This is an interesting area that I have not seen before. Any comments? |
| chris Aug 04, 2004 11:01 AM EDT |
Intel attempts to implement the language extensions that gcc has for compatibility. Linux makes a lot of use of these non-standard language features, and Linux is unwilling to change that. Some are for optimizations, and others add functionality that isn't available in many other places. Usually when g++ fails to compile something that it used to compile, it's because the older version had a bug that was corrected. But that's mostly due to C++, which the linux kernel doesn't use. I'm not familiar with just "C" compatibility issues though. |
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