Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 14:38:54 -0500 (EST) From: Dan To: Eli Zaretskii cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: DJGPP vs Borland C++ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Eli Zaretskii wrote: :> :>On 27 Jan 1997, Daniel P Hudson wrote: :> :>DJGPP is *not* just GCC + more bugs. First, there is libc which is :>entirely independent of GCC, and in my experience is much *less* buggy :>than BC. Then there are DJGPP-ported packages of which Borland users can :>only dream. I never said that is ll it is, I merely pointed out that we have to look at DJGPP bugs AND GCC bugs. :>> >competes with. That's not to say that DJGPP is without bugs, but if :>> >ou should discover one, chances are it will be fixed and patches made :>> >available less than a week after you report it. Usually it takes only :>> >one or two days. :>> Borland HAS ALWAYS made patches avaiable very quickly from their :>> web/ftp sites.> :>That might be true for bugs that are simple to solve. I have reported a :>couple of bugs to Borland about 3 years ago, and last time I looked they :>were still unsolved, although my report included a detailed script and :>analysis which pinpointed the exact cause of the bug. If that was with :>DJGPP, I would just grab the sources and make the fixes. I suppose you cut out my comment about the long wait for proper ANSI complaince because? :>> Point in hand, Borland C++ targets DOS16, DOS32, WIN3x, WIN95, OS/2, :>> and NT while GCC targets DOS32 only. Therefore Borland has a lot more :>> code to screw-up, :>I disagree. You should count the code size per dedicated programmer, not :>the sheer size of the package. If you do that, you will see that DJGPP In that case, GNU C definately looses out since Borland's products are only coded by a few employees and GNU CC is coded by the world. :>has much more code per programmer, and therefore should be more buggy, not Umm, no I won't, maybe if you only count the original coders, however, as you said many people contribute to debugging GNU C therefore, GNU C has many more coders than the original design team. :>less. But in reality, DJGPP has less bugs. I submit that the fact that :>the sources are free to be browsed and edited make debugging easier and :>improve the product faster, because everyone who's interested can look My point exactly. :>> GCC and DJGPP are as buggy as the old Borland DOS based :>> systems were. Large software packages are going to have bugs, there :>> is no way around it. :> :>Yes, there is: get the sources, debug them, submit the analysis to the :>maintainers, talk to them and have the problem solved in a few days. With :>a commercial product, you cannot do that, at least in my experience. No there isn't, GNU C sources have been under the GPL for some time and it still has bugs. Just look at the gnu.* hierarchy to read up on 3 or 4 of them a week.