compiling GHC with a custom path to GCC

[Seth Kurtzberg]

Simon Marlow wrote:

>On 17 February 2005 12:43, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Simon Marlow wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>On 17 February 2005 12:05, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I'm not positive about 2.95, but I know that on 3.x it crashes in
>>>>different places, and even compiling different source files.  With
>>>>each 3.x release, they fix some of them, but others pop up to take
>>>>their place.  Clearly the gcc people don't know what's going on.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Are you sure this isn't a hardware problem on your system?  gcc
>>>crashing randomly is usually an indicator of bad memory or similar.
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>	Simon
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I reproduced it on forty machines, all sparc ultras.  I've reproduced
>>it 
>>on at least 10 linux boxes, two BSD boxes, and the thread started with
>>the problem on freeBSD.  It isn't hard to find the error on a zillion
>>pages.  For example:
>>
>>For example: 
>>http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/1999-03/msg00083.html
>>http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-01/msg00611.html
>>http://www.winehq.org/hypermail/wine-users/2000/12/0498.html 
>>
>>Some of these believe the error occrs on cc1 after it receives an
>>error six. 
>>
>>I'm amazed that you haven't seen it.  That's very unusual for gcc 3.x.
>>You've been lucky.
>>    
>>
>
>You're mixing up different errors - searching for 'gcc internal error'
>isn't particularly helpful.  gcc internal errors happen for lots of
>different reasons, not just a single bug.  Random unrepeatable crashes
>are almost certainly hardware failure.
>
>The crash on FreeBSD we were talking about earlier is repeatable, and
>only happens with GCC 2.95.x.
>
>The crash that happens on your 40 Sparc Ultras is repeatable, right?
>It's probably just a compiler bug in the particular version of gcc
>you're using.
>  
>
Wrong.

Some are sparc 10s, 20s, ultra 10s, blades, 2000's, off the top of my head.

The x86 hardware includes seven Dell machines, three machines I built, 8 
compaq machines (before the merger),  three HP machines, four Fujitsu 
laptops, and those are only the ones I remember specifically running the 
test on.

The sparcs, especially, run for three solid months, every one of them, 
without a single problem or error.  They are rebooted every three months 
as a precaution, although I think it is an unnecessary one.  The only 
program that crashes is gcc.  It makes no difference what gcc is 
compiling, as long as it is big.

Of course, I suppose it is possible that every Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 
processor, or all the PC100, single channel DDR, and dual channel memory 
sticks, and all the different sparc processors tested all have a 
hardware problem that appear only when you use gcc, but that strikes me 
as rather unlikely.

In the face of well over 50 machines, all of which have the same problem 
with gcc, and none of which has a single problem with any other program 
(including Sun's compiler), that doesn't seem likely.  The same thing is 
true in the machines running windows; Microsoft's compiler will build 
all day long, while gcc crashes.  If this just happened on windows, you 
might question the windows gcc port, but it doesn't happen only on windows.

Also, it makes no difference how many errors cause gcc to crash.  If it 
has 1000 different bugs or one bug, it still crashes.

I don't see how pretending this doesn't happen is terribly useful.

>Cheers,
>	Simon
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