Re: [PATCH] Raise the minimum GCC version to 5.2

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 02:08:31PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> What is relevant is what version of gcc various distributions actually
> have reasonably easily available, and how old and relevant the
> distributions are. We did decide that (just as an example) RHEL 7 was
> too old to worry about when we updated the gcc version requirement
> last time.
> 
> Last year, Arnd and Kirill (maybe others were involved too) made a
> list of distros and older gcc versions. But I don't think anybody
> actually _maintains_ such a list. It would be perhaps interesting to
> have some way to check what compiler versions are being offered by
> different distros.

fwiw, Debian 9 aka Stretch released June 2017 had gcc 6.3
Debian 10 aka Buster released June 2019 had gcc 7.4 *and* 8.3.
Debian 8 aka Jessie had gcc-4.8.4 and gcc-4.9.2.

So do we care about people who haven't bothered to upgrade userspace
since 2017?  If so, we can't go past 4.9.