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Re: compiler standards (and/or min gcc version) supported withinstalled headers ?
On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 January 2013 10:17:46 Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> > On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> > > I say we agree that 2.95.3 is the oldest compiler we will support
> > > for compiling userspace applications using glibc headers.
> >
> > Given that the headers are generally meant to support non-GCC compilers, I
> > think all you might gain is elimination of cases specifically for older
> > GCC, so that older GCC uses the same cases as non-GCC. Simply changing
> > __GNUC_PREREQ (2, 95) to __GNUC__ is hardly a gain. (And where the
> > older-GCC case is simply an optimization, or where the older-GCC and
> > non-GCC cases have similar functionality that's not fully conforming, I
> > think a more recent baseline such as 4.1 would be reasonable.)
>
> i don't think 4.1 is reasonable. i def see people actively using gcc-3.3 and
> gcc-3.4 today (when things break, i get reports fairly quickly).
But how important is it that users of 3.3 get the macro definition of
__mempcpy (that's used for __GNUC_PREREQ (3, 0) && !__GNUC_PREREQ (3, 4)),
rather than just getting calls to the out-of-line __mempcpy in glibc (like
non-GCC compilers), for example? That's the issue involved where the
version conditionals are just about optimizations: removing complicated
macro definitions that won't actually have been tested with the glibc
testsuite for several years.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com