Compiling Perl under GCC

Maclir has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

This is more a question about installing perl, rather than using it. Current environment is perl 5.005_3, a range of modules, Apache 1.3.12 / mod_perl 1.24, all on Solaris 2.6. All the stuff has been compiled under gcc 2.81. Now, I am about to get DBD::Informix installed, which says it needs to be compiled with a C compiler that accepts prototypes - gcc 2.95.2. Fine, I have that.

Question - will perl / Apache / whatever object if one module has been compiled under a later version of gcc? Will I have to reinstall perl, mod_perl, Apache, and other modules using gcc 2.95.2 to prevent major disaster?

Thanks, Maclir (Ken)

Comment on Compiling Perl under GCC

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Compiling Perl under GCC by nardo (Friar) on Aug 15, 2000 at 07:32 UTC
All versions of gcc should accept prototypes (with the possible exception of the very first pre-1.0 versions). If, however, you do need to compile it with the latest gcc, there shouldn't be any problems.	[reply]
Re: Compiling Perl under GCC by Blue (Hermit) on Aug 16, 2000 at 00:51 UTC
For what it's worth, I had to tweak the compiler options in the make file for the DBD::Informix module to get it to compile. Of course, I was using AIX, so YMMV. I think I had to add __STDC__.	[reply]
RE: Compiling Perl under GCC by Nitsuj (Hermit) on Aug 16, 2000 at 03:08 UTC
While I can understand where your concern could arise from, the different versions of GCC should work nicely with each other... The compiler should generally be of little concern as far as program intercompatibility is concerned except for certain things, which are really more operating system specific than compiler specific. In general, very few issues, if any, should arise. The main key being that everything gives the right output and takes the right input... and they should under all versions of GCC. It's much more of a problem when you are dealing with binaries and files on different OS's, but hey, you're not ;-) Just Another Perl Backpacker	[reply]