egcs vs gcc

[James Wilkinson]

Steven Pasternak wrote:
> This is sort of out-of-the-blue, but I was just looking at RH6.2 and saw that 
> it (and maybe another) didn't ship with gcc, but with egcs. The command 'gcc' 
> is still there, though. What is the difference of gcc 2.7.x and egcs?

Ancient GCC history, now.

The "official" gcc was stagnating somewhat, and the developers were
somewhat resistant to adopting patches from outside. The Experimental Gnu
Compiler System was a forked project, aiming to improve matters. It
proved successful enough that the two projects combined under the gcc
name but with the EGCS code and maintainers.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGCS and the overview to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_Collection : at time of
writing, they provide good quick summaries.

James.

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