Re: Build failures with gcc 4.5 and older

From: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>, Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: Build failures with gcc 4.5 and older
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2018 10:36:23 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180814173623.GA5117@roeck-us.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CA+55aFy0SFGaNmzCcpwMCeY_f3ZTG54NmV3SosbK6=QdE20=5A@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 10:20:32AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 10:09 AM Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:
> >
> > Does that mean that gcc 4.5 and older are now officially no longer
> > supported for compiling the kernel ?
> 
> I guess we might as well make this the excuse for making that official.
> 
> Maybe it's trivially fixable, but I don't even want to look at it,
> since we've talked about updating the minimum gcc version so long.
> 
> > If so, would it make sense to update include/linux/compiler-gcc.h
> > accordingly ?
> 
> Unless somebody cares, and comes with a trivial fix to make old
> compilers happy, let's just do that.
> 

Only implication is that it is the death warrant for unicore32,
since the only compiler available for it is gcc 4.4.2.

Another question is if there are still companies out there who only
permit gcc 4.4 and older due to its switch to GPL3.

Not that I care about any of those. Building the kernel with those old
compilers without hitting some compiler bug is getting more and more
difficult.

Guenter