C, a slight return…

My company are in the process of moving one of our legacy applications written against UniVerse from Tru64 to RHEL5. I set up a RHEL5 server yesterday, then got roped into trying to figure out why a bit of our C code wasn’t working. I used to do quite a bit of C in a previous life, but on reflexion I shouldn’t have made this public knowledge. 🙂

After a little bit of messing I sorted the problems in our code, only to notice that UniVerse wouldn’t recompile. A bit of rooting through some of the UniVerse source code and the odd Google search made me a little suspicious. It seems gcc version 4.x. is a lot stricter about certain programming practices and the pre-4 versions. I switched to gcc34 provided by a compatibility package and the “less than ideal” UniVerse code compiled without complaint.

I could look on this experience in a negative light and bemoan the loss of a previous skill set, but instead I choose to take away a positive view and think, “Not bad for a grunt DBA!” 🙂

Cheers

Tim…