Re: compiling GSL on digital unix.

[Tim Mooney <mooney at dogbert dot cc dot ndsu dot nodak dot edu>]

In regard to: Re: compiling GSL on digital unix. , Jon McAuliffe said (at...:

>> I think it is a shame to have the code not build because of a bad
>> option: it looks cheesy.  I would prefer to have configure warn you
>> that the option is not there, and then either go on with a caveat, or
>> stop in a clean way.
>
>i agree --- mainly because we have switched C compilers firmwide, and gcc is
>no longer supported. if i want an upgrade, i have to do it myself, and that's
>not really what i'm supposed to spend my time on. (not that it wouldn't be
>enormously entertaining to build gcc from scratch.)

If performance is an issue, I highly recommend you use DEC C (the system
compiler) over gcc (especially the older compilers) on Digital Unix.  gcc
2.95.x brings the compiler a much better optimizer, but it's still behind
the system compiler, sometimes by a lot.  I've worked with a lot of vendor
compilers, and Digital Unix's is pretty good.

Don't get me wrong -- I like gcc too.  I think I've built every version
of gcc since 2.4.5 on some platform or another, and I try to always make
sure my code compiles cleanly with both gcc and whatever vendor compiler
I'm using, since gcc often points out subtle problems that vendor compilers
blithely ignore.  It's just my experience that you'll get better or much
better performance out of code compiled with DEC C.  If performance isn't
an issue, the point is moot.

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                              mooney@dogbert.cc.ndsu.NoDak.edu
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