it's also probably worth noting that there are problems with machine code on Darwin/i386, and it's still using gcc-4.2. I think that situation is related to position independent code, and does appear to have broken at some point (my 7.8.352 does have machine code, for example).
Bill
On Fri, 1 Jun 2012, Jonas Walldén @ Pike developers forum wrote:
Is the code generation problem a gcc bug that will be fixed in a future gcc 4.x release, or is it an incompatibility that Pike must accomodate (like 7.9 has)?