upgrade time?

[Stumpo VIII, Cody (C.M.)]

What exactly were the "issues" with gcc 2.96 again?  I have Swarm 2.1, with
the latest entry in the ChangeLog being from 2/21/00.  

I notice this pretty new CD of RedHat 7 just laying around the office, and
wonder if it will screw anything up?   In a real break from my personal
tradition, I'm not going to try to not just upgrade the OS first and then
see what breaks.

Hoping to get answers like, "go ahead, no problems," or "Install swarm-2.1.1
and then there'll be no problems,"  and not answers like "get the latest CVS
snapshot and then there'll be only problems you can fix by editing the
following list of files before building."

Are any of the Swarm "needed software" updates in RH7 besides gcc
problematic at all?  From
http://www.redhat.com/products/software/linux/pl_rhl7.html
Red Hat 7 includes: 
BLT 2.4u
gcc 2.96
gdb 5.0
kaffe 1.0.6
libffi -- none!?  my machine has package 1.20-1 right now, although this
includes a file /usr/lib/libffi.so.1.1.3 as the highest.
libpng 1.0.8
make 3.79.1
tcl 8.3.1
tk 8.3.1
xpm -- none!? my machine has package 3.4j-5, although this includes a file
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4.10 as the highest.
zlib 1.1.3

In the needed software directory of Swarm.org updated March 15th, every
single item is at a different version level, except zlib.
ftp://ftp.swarm.org/pub/swarm/src/needed/

Thanks,
Cody

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