Red Hat 7.0 totally pissed off everyone, including the gcc team and Linus Torvalds.
The thing is, they forked the gcc code without letting anyone know. This compiler is very shoddy, and was a developmental release. It fails to compile the kernel and XFree86.
Not only this, but they saw it fit to
give their
rotten compiler its own
version number without telling
anyone. "2.96". This
implies that it's a
release and not a
code fork. And we all know that
Red Hat is not Linux, and
certainly Red Hat is not GNU, and
Red Hat is not the GCC Steering Committee.
Linus says that RH7 is unsuitable as a development platform, and any code that compiles on it likely won't compile anywhere else.
A good thing to put in your C code:
#if __GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ == 96
#error You are using Red Hat 7.
#endif