Hi Guys,New features in the GNU toolchain this month include:* Support has been added for building both the old linker and thenew linker - GOLD - in the same toolchain. (For architecturesthat support the new linker that is. Currently these are the x86,x86_64, ARM, PowerPC and Sparc architectures). Configure thesources with the option --enable-gold=both or the--enable-gold=both/gold option. The latter makes gold the defaultlinker, the former makes ld the default linker.* The *-mingw64 targets no longer use a leading underscore prefix bydefault. This is for compatibility with Microsoft's compiler.The old behaviour can be restored by configuring a toolchain buildwith the option: --enable-leading-mingw64-underscores.* The next generation of the ISO C standard is in development, andit is now provisionally called ISO C1X. Hence gcc now supports a--std=c1x command line option, although this does not actually doanything new at this point.* A new, sort-of, warning command line option has been added to gcc:-Wsuggest-attribute=pure-Wsuggest-attribute=constThese cause gcc to issues warnings about functions which might becandidates for the PURE or CONST attributes. Const functions donot examine any values except their arguments, have no effectsexcept generating their return value, and they always return.Also they do not perform any indirection through any pointers.Pure functions are the same except that they may also examineglobal variables. Giving such functions the pure or constattribute can help the compiler produce better code, by allowingcalls to them to be more aggressively optimized.The compiler will only issue warnings for functions that arevisible in other compilation units. The analysis requires thatthe -fipa-pure-const option be enabled, although this is doneautomatically with -O1 and above. Higher optimization levelsimprove the accuracy of the analysis.* A new optimization has been added to gcc. Enabled via the:-fipa-profilecommand line switch, or automatically at -O1 and higher, itperforms interprocedural profile propagation. This marks functionsthat are only called functions with the COLD attribute asthemselves being cold. Also functions executed once (such asfunctions with the noreturn attribute or static constructors ordestructors) are located. Then these cold functions and loop-freeparts of functions executed only once are then optimized for sizerather than speed.* Another new optimization has been added called:-fzeeThis optimization only helps targets that implicitly zero-extend64-bit registers after writing to their lower 32-bit half, such asthe x86_64. It helps gcc detect cases where it might otherwisegenerate a unneeded zero-extenstion instruction. Currently it isnot enabled by default at any optimization level - instead it mustbe manually enabled.Finally, the Link Time Optimization feature of the GNU toolchain isnow able to work with non-ELF file formats. Specifically the COFF(including COFF/PE) and Mach-O binary file formats are nowsupported.CheersNick