On 12/11/2023 23:03, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
On Sun, 12 Nov 2023, Fabian Maurer wrote:
For those not in the loop: The question came up what GCC version is the oldest supported one, and which language features can't be used in Wine.
I recommend we do not cater to versions of GCC that have been end of life for an extended period of time.
Although ongoing gcc 4.3 support is probably a bit of work, since most people don't test against gcc 4.3 compatibility so there's some "regressions" from time to time.
GCC 4.3 went end of life mid 2011.
Or just cap it at 4.8 which currently works.
GCC 4.8 went end of life mid 2015.
The oldest GCC release series I would remotely consider supporting is GCC 8 which wend end of life mid 2021, though it's really not unreasonable to focus on GCC 11 and later.
Gerald
Sorry, what? Some distros have 10 year long-term support. Not everything is rolling release, nor should it be, not even close.
I mean, compiling or backporting compilers isn't that big of a deal but the main problem with new compilers on old platforms is that you might need new core libraries (libc, libstdc++, etc) because of how GCC works. Having multiple libc side-by-side is difficult, and updating such a core component in a stable distro is way too much to ask.