Grant wrote:
> I've been stuck on gcc-3.4.6 on my hardened profile system (currently:
> hardened/linux/amd64/10.0) for a very long time.  Now it looks like
> gcc-4.3.4 has been stabilized for hardened profiles.  Has anyone
> tested it?  This system is critical for me, so I've got to be careful.
> 
> - Grant
> 

A lot of us have been testing the new GCC for a while now using the 
hardened-development overlay. It's as stable as 3.4.x was in my experience.

About a year and a half ago, I reformatted a laptop and started from 
scratch using gcc-4.x from the overlay, because what the hell. Many 
issues from the gcc-3.x era actually cleared up with the new toolchain. 
Once I convinced myself that things were working correctly, I began to 
migrate "real" systems to the development GCC one at a time.

All of my personal machines are using gcc-4.x, and things work much 
better on the desktop than they did with gcc-3.x. Many of our servers 
have also been migrated: web, database, dns, mail, monitoring, firewall, 
etc. all work fine. I have noticed absolutely no difference (either 
positive or negative) on those machines.

In short, switching your default compiler with gcc-config isn't going to 
change anything. Test any new packages/upgrades just as you would have 
with gcc-3.x.