gcc-3_4-branch is these days a release branch, on which only important regression bugfixes are allowed. If a bug is not a regression from some older GCC release, it needs to be really important bug fix. The fixes on the branch are regression tested by us as well as community. While gcc-3_2-branch was still live, RHEL3 used to be updated from that branch in every quarterly updates and similarly RHEL4 U1 contained fixes from gcc-3_4-branch. Several of the fixes on gcc-3_4-branch (as well as before on gcc-3_2-branch) were later on requested by our customers (including now at RHEL4 U3/U4 time). If we leverage the community testing in addition to our own testing, as opposed to maintaining just our own branch and spending weeks of time finding and backporting bugfixes on our own, we save significant amount of time and make our compiler more stable and more bugfree. The vast majority of bugfixes on the branch come with tests for the GCC testsuite and thus are regression tested on all architectures we build the compiler on. This bug has been created to comply with the content definition process.
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update release.
The gcc-3_4-branch has been EOLed and there have been no commits on it since April 2006, so I'm dropping this request.