This artical does not introduce how to install another version GCC and python on Fedora. It only discusses whether Fedora should offer multiple compilers and interpreters or not.
Last month I switched my father’s desktop from Ubuntu to Debian. To be similar with Ubuntu, Debian provide multiple compilers in packages management tool. We can install more than one compiler and interpreter in one time, such as gcc-4.4, gcc-4.3, python-2.6 and python-2.5. Users can switch to another compiler easily.
As a matter of fact, Most Linux distributions would offer multiple compilers and interpreters, not just on Debian and Ubuntu. We can find out multiple GCC on Gentoo and Arch. Unfortunately, Fedora just offer the only one generic GCC to users. If you want to install a GCC 4.3 on Fedora, you need to build it from source codes manually. I do not think this is a convenient method. However, Fedora provides compat-gcc-34 and compat-python24 these two packages. You can use them to do what you want.
Sometimes we need the old GCC to build something. For example, EVA is a QT3 QQ client for Linux. It is so old and lack of maintenance that it can not be built on GCC 4.4. So many users give up this program. In fact, EVA can be built on GCC 4.3. No one believes EVA is the only one case that fails to be built on the latest compiler. If Fedora have more than one version compilers, it will make the job much easier. You can say you should request the author to write a patch for new compiler, nevertheless, the project is out of support.
Maintaining several version compilers and interpreters is not an easy job. It is necessary to do it. Fedora leads the trend of Linux, and Fedora imports many new technology to the mainline releases. As we know, Fedora wants to be the best software development platform. So Fedora contains of a lot of libraries. This is why Fedora has the best compatibility with 32-bit programs on 64-bit system. No that Fedora provides lots of libraries, why can not it offer more than one old version GCC and interpreters? I believe that commercial development needs varieties of GCC and python to test their codes.
It is just my wish, but I still hope it will come true.
As the python packager of Mandriva, I have faced the same choice and problem, and I think that people underestimate the cost of having several interpreter. Usually, when you find a packaging error in one of the multiple version of the interpreter, you will likely have to check every version of the rpm to see if the bug is also there. The same goes for patching, and the same goes for QA.
So, when you want 2 versions of python, you simply put twice the load on the packager. This mean either to have twice times the ressources, roughly, or to have half of the quality, or to take twice the time needed.
And of course, in the case of python, either you have a complex scheme like debian has to manage 3 versions of python, or you use 2/3 packages for every library, which has a huge impact on everybody packaging something using it.
And while you can avoid for noarch rpm to recompile them 2 or 3 times, for compiled module, that’s not possible ( afaik ).
So, IMHO, Fedora should stick to one default version of python and gcc in order to be able to concentrate the effort on them.
The commercial argument is valid ( even if I think that’s outside of Fedora goals to provides support for this ), but what people want to test is not a specific version of gcc but more that the code build on a specific platform. So instead of having 3 versions of gcc, I think people should use chroot or vm.
At least, that’s how I was doing to develop on python in my day job, since the platform we were targetting was debian stable, running python 2.4 and some old version of python-qt.
Also, as far as I know, serious developement shop tend to use buildbot, with specific chroot and os to test build on various os. So no need to have everything in the same distribution, the complexity is not worth the gain, imho.
( 你好 for spam check, but I do not know what it mean :/ )
Micheal,
Thank you for your comment. “你好” means hello in English. A long time ago, some spammer often sent spam comments to here. I must install a “Some Chinese Please! ” for spam check. So any comments must contain some Chinese words.
I realize that it is a hard work to maintain several compilers and interpreters. Packagers and developers need to test as several times as ever’s. Also, they need to repack some libraries for every version compilers and interpreters. Too many work for them.
Now Fedora has the default GCC version 4.4 and the default Python version 2.6.2. In Fedora 13, Python 3 will get into the repository which are independent with Python 2.6. RPM Fusion also wants to package compat-python25 for the reason that Google GAE SDK requires it.
I just hope that Fedora and RPM Fusion provide some package like compat-gcc-41, compat-gcc-42 and compat-gcc-43. Some softwares I love can not be built on GCC 4.4. They have lost maintenance. I am an ordinary users and I can not know how to write a patch. So it looks unnecessary. I still hope it come true.
你好
It’s usually quite easy to make stuff which compiles with GCC 4.3 compile with 4.4. Most likely it’s just missing #include statements (look at what functions are undeclared, check what header they come from and add #include at the top of the file, next to its other #include statements).
And in many cases, the fix has already been done by somebody else. For EVA, you will need these 2 patches (cd into the extracted directory and apply the patches with patch -p1 <file.patch):
http://patches.ubuntu.com/by-release/extracted/ubuntu/e/eva/0.4.921+svn42-2ubuntu3/06_fix_ftbfs_with_gcc43.diff
http://patches.ubuntu.com/by-release/extracted/ubuntu/e/eva/0.4.921+svn42-2ubuntu3/09_fix_gcc44.patch
(Note that the first patch is needed even for 4.3, so in fact 4.2 is the last release it wouldn't need patching for.)
Kevin Kofler, 你好
Thank you for patch. I will try it.
Pingback: Multiple Compilers And Interpreters For Fedora? » 若有所思&&若有所想 | Just linux！