A change for bc(1), no change for man

Pierre Abbat noticed that bc(1)‘s usage of GNU readline something that wasn’t GNU readline made it harder to use; Sascha Wildner changed it to use libedit.  Pierre’s other complaint, that BSD man page output stays on-screen when completed, is a positive feature.  Linux systems that clear man page output enrage me, because I expect to be able to take advantage of my scroll buffer.

gcc47 means gcc-aux for you

John Marino has added a ‘gcc47’ compiler ccvar, so you can build world and kernel with it.  ‘It’ is actually gcc-aux, since it seems to work better than the basic (“vanilla”?)  gcc47.  You also get Ada support, though that wasn’t the driving reason to pick it.  This is brand new so don’t try it unless you’re ready to discover issues.

Is there any other BSD able to use gcc 4.7 for world/kernel?  Even 4.6?  Most of the attention has been on clang.

Other ways to use lint

Sascha Wildner has made it easier to use alternative syntax checking systems as a “lint” make target in DragonFly.  His usage of coccinelle, as one of these alternatives, has already found many bugs – just today, for instance.

Is “alternative syntax checking systems” the right phrase for this?  I don’t know.  “Correctness checker”?  My phrases all sound like something you’d read on a government form.

libpthreadbroken, fixed

If you are running bleeding-edge DragonFly, libpthread was broken for a short period.  If you built anything in the last … 12 hours?  You may want to rebuild it.  If that doesn’t describe you, it’s a nonevent.

It’s funny that I’m reporting a short-term break in bleeding-edge operating system code as any sort of surprise.  It shows something about how stable DragonFly-master is most of the time.