Re: Minimum GCC version for building glibc

[Mike Frysinger <vapier at gentoo dot org>]

On 04 Nov 2014 11:06, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/04/2014 08:58 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > what's the diff between 4.4 and 4.6 ?
> 
> 4.5 didn't add much to the language: __builtin_unreachable is the only 
> thing I'd write home about.

well, you snipped part of my context :).  i'm not interested in what fancy 
features any particular gcc version introduced, unless they matter to glibc.

we bump the min required version of any package for these reasons:
 - newer functionality is not feasible to duplicate in glibc
 - existing backwards compat code grows to a size that is too onerous to 
keep maintaining

any time someone says "let's raise the min ver of package P from X to Y", imo it 
needs to be justified with "we get to delete Z lines of code" or "it is not 
possible to implement critical feature F otherwise".  i think the burden is on 
the person who wants to drop support to justify it, not on other people to 
justify keeping support for older versions.

in this case, the proposal of raising gcc 4.4 to 4.7 was accompanied by "it 
might make implementing C11 support easier".  it seems like support for that was 
already posted not requiring 4.7.  so what's the reason for dropping 4.4/4.5 ?
-mike

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