Re: [PATCH] Raise the minimum GCC version to 5.2

[Alexander Dahl <ada@thorsis.com>]

Hei hei,

Am Sun, May 02, 2021 at 11:30:07PM +0100 schrieb Matthew Wilcox:
> On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 02:08:31PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > What is relevant is what version of gcc various distributions actually
> > have reasonably easily available, and how old and relevant the
> > distributions are. We did decide that (just as an example) RHEL 7 was
> > too old to worry about when we updated the gcc version requirement
> > last time.
> > 
> > Last year, Arnd and Kirill (maybe others were involved too) made a
> > list of distros and older gcc versions. But I don't think anybody
> > actually _maintains_ such a list. It would be perhaps interesting to
> > have some way to check what compiler versions are being offered by
> > different distros.
> 
> fwiw, Debian 9 aka Stretch released June 2017 had gcc 6.3
> Debian 10 aka Buster released June 2019 had gcc 7.4 *and* 8.3.
> Debian 8 aka Jessie had gcc-4.8.4 and gcc-4.9.2.
> 
> So do we care about people who haven't bothered to upgrade userspace
> since 2017?  If so, we can't go past 4.9.

Desktops and servers are all nice, however I just want to make you
aware, there are embedded users forced to stick to older cross
toolchains for different reasons as well, e.g. in industrial
environment. :-)

This is no show stopper for us, I just wanted to let you be aware.

Greets
Alex