Re: Require at least gcc 4.2

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 04:03:28PM +0100, Neil Cafferkey wrote:
> 
> No offence, but this proposal strikes me as slightly lazy. In other words,
> I think these bugs should be identified instead of being "fixed" by
> declaring "your compiler is too old".

In this case, we weren't speaking about bugs we had, which would need to be
fixed, but about bugs in GCC, which had been presumably fixed in GCC, and for
which we were being dragged into keeping workarounds.

It turns out the problem in GCC is not really considered to be "fixable", and
therefore might not be seen as a bug.  So this discussion is now moot, but the
general principle stands.

> FWIW, I still use i386-elf-gcc 3.4.3 under Mac OS X, because (last time I
> checked) it's the most recent version available from macports.

I just checked.  There's now GCC 4.4, and even 4.5 snapshots.

> The fact is
> that a lot of people outside those who install a new version of Linux
> every six months or so are still using these old compilers.

Debian etch was released more than 2 years ago, and it already had GCC 4.1.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."