Is using Apple's GCC 4.2 on PowerPC-Tiger worth it?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 11, 2012, at 23:03, Daryle Walker wrote:

> I'm stuck on an August-2002 G4 eMac, running Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger.  I noticed that Apple's GCC 4.2, which I think is used on all post-Tiger systems[1], is an option.  Is it worth downloading; can I do anything with it?  I saw a bug #16745 describing you guys never adapting it, but saw a page at <http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Mac_OS_X/Macbook_Manifesto> hacking a way in anyway.
> 
> BTW, I have regular GCC 4.6 installed too.  (It took several days to build!)  Will macports use the latest GCC installed, or always use my Apple-GCC-4.0.1?  (I think I saw a MacPorts wiki saying that the developer can tweak which one is used.)
> 
> [1] I think Apple gave up on GCC for CLang on Lion systems.

MacPorts ports by default use gcc-4.0 on Tiger and Leopard, gcc-4.2 on Snow Leopard with Xcode 3, llvm-gcc-4.2 on Snow Leopard and Lion with Xcode 4.0 or 4.1, and clang on Snow Leopard and Lion with Xcode 4.2 and up. It is not our intention to give users the ability to change this, although individual ports might change this if it is necessary for them.

Apple gcc-4.2 is part of Xcode 3.0 through 4.1 inclusive. That means it's not part of Xcode on Tiger, nor of Xcode 4.2 or greater.

We have the apple-gcc42 port, but it is designed to allow Xcode 4.2 users to use gcc-4.2. It does not build on Tiger and the maintainer has no access to a Tiger machine and understandably little interest in working on this problem since Tiger is so old.

Why do you think you need gcc-4.2? Is there something that's not working with gcc-4.0?