On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 04:01:43PM -0600, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 09:02:05PM +0000, Andrew Dean wrote:
> > > > Many systems do not have a system compiler newer than this *four years
> > > > old* one. GCC 4.8 is the first GCC version that supports all of
> > > > C++11, which is the only reason it would be even near acceptable to
> > > > require something this *new*.
> > >
> > > Agreed. Note we're even shipping new service packs for SLE12 which has
> > > that
> > > "ancient" compiler version (OTOH there _is_ a fully supported GCC 9
> > > available
> > > for SLE12 as well).
> > >
> > > So, if we want C++11 then fine. But requiring GCC 9+ isn't going to fly.
> > > IIRC
> > > GCC 6 is first having -std=c++14 by default, but unless there's a
> > > compelling
> > > reason to use C++14 in GCC I'd rather not do it at this point.
> > >
> > > Removing all the workarounds in the tree we have for GCC 4.[12].x would of
> > > course be nice.
> > >
> > > But I have to update the testers that still use GCC 4.1.x as host
> > > compiler :P
>
> > Richard/Segher: Are we in agreement that we can move forward with updating
> > to c++11 as the minimum version? I have made the simple change locally to
> > modify the flag and verified that I got the exact same test results
> > with/without the change. I can look into the work to add a configuration
> > warning if the compiler doesn't support c++11, but wanted to make sure we
> > are on the same page before doing so.
>
> If GCC 4.8.5 works as bootstrap compiler, it is fine with me, and good
> progress too. (Which means 4.8.5 has to work for at least all primary
> targets.)
What would be the advantage of bumping the requirement now as opposed to at
the start of next stage 1 though? We should be fixing bugs now, not
introduce new features nor do code refactoring.
Jakub
