Re: [RFC] minimum gcc version for kernel: raise to gcc-4.3 or 4.6?

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Fri Dec 16 2016 - 17:00:58 EST


On Friday, December 16, 2016 6:00:43 PM CET Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> On 2016-12-16 11:56:21 [+0100], Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > The original gcc-4.3 release was in early 2008. If we decide to still
> > support that, we probably want the first 10 quirks in this series,
> > while gcc-4.6 (released in 2011) requires none of them.
>
> It this min gcc thingy ARM only?

This is part of the question that I'm trying to figure out myself.

Clearly having the same minimum version across all architectures simplifies
things a lot, because many of the bugs in old versions are architecture
independent. Then again, some architectures implicitly require a new version
because an old one never existed (e.g. arm64 or risc-v), while some other
architectures may require an old version.

Arnd