Subject: Re: RFC: drop support for gcc < 4.0
From: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@SteelEye.com>
To: Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>
Cc: Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       Jarek Poplawski <jarkao2@o2.pl>, Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>,
       linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070821212129.GG30705@stusta.de>
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Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:49:38 -0500
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On Tue, 2007-08-21 at 23:21 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 10:49:49PM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> >> How many people e.g. test -rc kernels compiled with gcc 3.2?
> >
> > Why would that matter?  It either works or not.  If it doesn't
> > work, it can either be fixed, or support for that old compiler
> > version can be removed.
> 
> One bug report "kernel doesn't work / crash / ... when compiled with
> gcc 3.2, but works when compiled with gcc 4.2" will most likely be lost 
> in the big pile of unhandled bugs, not cause the removal of gcc 3.2 
> support...

What's the bugzilla or pointer to this report please?  Those of us who
use gcc-3 as the default kernel compiler will take it seriously (if it
looks to have an impact to our kernel builds) otherwise we can tell you
it's unreproducible/not a problem etc.

James


> > The only other policy than "only remove support if things are
> > badly broken" would be "only support what the GCC team supports",
> > which would be >= 4.1 now; and there are very good arguments for
> > supporting more than that with the Linux kernel.
> 
> No, it's not about bugs in gcc, it's about kernel+gcc combinations that 
> are mostly untested but officially supported.
> 
> E.g. how many kernel developers use kernels compiled without 
> unit-at-a-time? And unit-at-a-time does paper over some bugs,
> e.g. at about half a dozen section mismatch bugs I've fixed
> recently are not present with it.
> 
> But as the discussions have shown gcc 4.0 is currently too high for 
> making a cut, and it is not yet the right time for raising the minimum 
> required gcc version.
> 
> > Segher
> 
> cu
> Adrian
> 

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