Message from the gcc steering committee http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2000/msg00003.html
This gcc was not put into a distribution in error, but on purpose. See http://www.lwn.net/2000/1005/a/rh-tools.php3 for explanation. The fact that the Steering Commitee does not want to support this compiler does not change anything on the fact that Red Hat is supporting this compiler and we'll try to fix all bugs in it which will be reported to us. BTW: so far all bugs reported against our compiler were reproduceable with vanilla FSF gcc as well.
*** Bug 18558 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
"Please note that both GCC 2.96 and 2.97 are development versions; we do not recommend using them for production purposes. Binaries built using any version of GCC 2.96 or 2.97 will not be portable to systems based on one of our regular releases." -- http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.96.html Seems pretty clear to me. Why RH would offer an OS as a stable, major, release with a C compiler which comes with such a clear warning against using said compiler in production environments, I do not know. I would like to see a better explaination, as well as some information on how RH plans to support gcc 3.0.