Technology Preview features are currently not supported under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 subscription services, may not be functionally complete, and are generally not suitable for production use. However, these features are included as a customer convenience and to provide the feature with wider exposure.
Customers may find these features useful in a non-production environment. Customers are also free to provide feedback and functionality suggestions for a technology preview feature before it becomes fully supported. Erratas will be provided for high-severity security issues.
During the development of a technology preview feature, additional components may become available to the public for testing. It is the intention of Red Hat to fully support technology preview features in a future release.
Systemtap provides free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information about the running Linux system. This assists diagnosis of a performance or functional problem. With the help of systemtap, developers no longer need to go through the tedious and disruptive sequence of instrument, recompile, install, and reboot that may be otherwise required to collect data.
The GNU Compiler Collection (gcc-4.1) is still included in this release as a Technology Preview. This compiler was originally introduced as a Technology preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.4.
For more information about gcc-4.1, refer to the project website at http://gcc.gnu.org/. An in-depth manual for gcc-4.1.2 can also be read at http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.2/gcc/.