1. Compiling C++ with template code.

gcc 3.4.0 fails to compile a lot of C++ code that defines template classes. The same code compiles without problems on gcc 3.3.3. There appear to be other problems as well, not related to templates. I attempted to compile the whole of KDE with gcc 3.4, and kdeaddons, kdeedu and kdemultimedia all failed to compile. The same problem occurred with Rosegarden, which uses some complicated template stuff.

I found I could weed out some of the errors by patching the code, but I admit I was just guessing what would work, and may have been inadvertantly altering the functionality.

These problems mean that gcc 3.4.0 is not very useful as a system compiler. I think it would be best to wait until the original sources are adapted to the new gcc by their authors, rather than trying to "fix" complicated cases with patches.


2. Run time errors and crashes.

In two cases I have proved that compiling with gcc 3.4.0 causes run time errors, even if the compilation works.

When compiled with gcc 3.4.0, k3b cannot open an mp3. It hangs then crashes out. The problem occurs when k3b uses id3lib. I tracked down the offending call, and wrote a test programme that ran the same code. The test programme worked fine. When k3b and id3lib are compiled with gcc 3.3.3, this problem does not occur.

KDE file manager would crash when trying to display certain man pages using "man://command" as a URL. The same occurs with the KDE help viewer. When KDE was recompiled with gcc 3.3.3, this problem did not occur.


3. Making a system based on gcc 3.3.3

To get things stable and usable again, my friend an I have recompiled practically all of the packages we use using gcc 3.3.3. Other than the compiler, all the packages are the latest version. We are setting things up to synch to our own package repository, and to update this via abs and makepkg.