Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:56:30 +0200 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: RFC: Raise required gcc version to 3.2 ? |
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On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 06:48:49PM +0200, Mikael Pettersson wrote: > On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:00:12 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > >What is the oldest gcc we want to support in kernel 2.6? > > > >Currently, it's 2.95 . > > > >I'd suggest raising this to 3.2 which should AFAIK not be a problem for > >any distribution supporting kernel 2.6 . > > > >Is there any good reason why we should not drop support for older > >compilers? > > You're asking the wrong question. The right question would be: > "Is there any good reason to drop support for older compilers?" > > At least on i386, gcc-2.95.3 still works and has the advantage > of being much faster compile-time wise on older machines with > limited memory (like my 486 test box). And I'm not the only > one with that POV -- akpm also uses 2.95. > > Of course, if keeping 2.95.3 support would somehow hinder the > kernel's development, then it should be removed. But so far I > haven't seen any real(*) evidence that this is the case. >...
The advantages are: - reducing the number of supported gcc versions from 8 to 4 [1] allows the removal of several #ifdef's and workarounds - my impression is that the older compilers are only rarely used, so miscompilations of a driver with an old gcc might not be detected for a longer amount of time
My personal opinion about the time and space a compilation requires is that this is no longer that much of a problem for modern hardware, and in the worst case you can compile the kernels for older machines on more recent machines.
> /Mikael
cu Adrian
[1] support removed: 2.95, 2.96, 3.0, 3.1 still supported: 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.0
--
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