Disappointments and Misunderstandings
=====================================

   These problems are perhaps regrettable, but we don't know any
practical way around them.

   * Certain local variables aren't recognized by debuggers when you
     compile with optimization.

     This occurs because sometimes GNU CC optimizes the variable out of
     existence.  There is no way to tell the debugger how to compute the
     value such a variable "would have had", and it is not clear that
     would be desirable anyway.  So GNU CC simply does not mention the
     eliminated variable when it writes debugging information.

     You have to expect a certain amount of disagreement between the
     executable and your source code, when you use optimization.

   * Users often think it is a bug when GNU CC reports an error for code
     like this:

          int foo (struct mumble *);
          
          struct mumble { ... };
          
          int foo (struct mumble *x)
          { ... }

     This code really is erroneous, because the scope of `struct
     mumble' in the prototype is limited to the argument list
     containing it.  It does not refer to the `struct mumble' defined
     with file scope immediately below--they are two unrelated types
     with similar names in different scopes.

     But in the definition of `foo', the file-scope type is used
     because that is available to be inherited.  Thus, the definition
     and the prototype do not match, and you get an error.

     This behavior may seem silly, but it's what the ANSI standard
     specifies.  It is easy enough for you to make your code work by
     moving the definition of `struct mumble' above the prototype.
     It's not worth being incompatible with ANSI C just to avoid an
     error for the example shown above.

   * Accesses to bitfields even in volatile objects works by accessing
     larger objects, such as a byte or a word.  You cannot rely on what
     size of object is accessed in order to read or write the bitfield;
     it may even vary for a given bitfield according to the precise
     usage.

     If you care about controlling the amount of memory that is
     accessed, use volatile but do not use bitfields.

   * GNU CC comes with shell scripts to fix certain known problems in
     system header files.  They install corrected copies of various
     header files in a special directory where only GNU CC will
     normally look for them.  The scripts adapt to various systems by
     searching all the system header files for the problem cases that
     we know about.

     If new system header files are installed, nothing automatically
     arranges to update the corrected header files.  You will have to
     reinstall GNU CC to fix the new header files.  More specifically,
     go to the build directory and delete the files `stmp-fixinc' and
     `stmp-headers', and the subdirectory `include'; then do `make
     install' again.

   * On 68000 systems, you can get paradoxical results if you test the
     precise values of floating point numbers.  For example, you can
     find that a floating point value which is not a NaN is not equal
     to itself.  This results from the fact that the the floating point
     registers hold a few more bits of precision than fit in a `double'
     in memory.  Compiled code moves values between memory and floating
     point registers at its convenience, and moving them into memory
     truncates them.

     You can partially avoid this problem by using the `-ffloat-store'
     option (see Optimize Options.).

   * On the MIPS, variable argument functions using `varargs.h' cannot
     have a floating point value for the first argument.  The reason
     for this is that in the absence of a prototype in scope, if the
     first argument is a floating point, it is passed in a floating
     point register, rather than an integer register.

     If the code is rewritten to use the ANSI standard `stdarg.h'
     method of variable arguments, and the prototype is in scope at the
     time of the call, everything will work fine.