On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 10:49 AM Claudio Bantaloukas via Gcc <[email protected]> wrote: > > Title says it all really. > > Why am I asking? I'd like to try writing a build that checks stage1 > works with the earliest version of gcc the project wants to support. > > https://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html currently says: > - GCC 5.4 or newer has sufficient support for used C++14 features. > - If you need to build an intermediate version of GCC in order to > bootstrap current GCC, consider GCC 9.5 > > Should it use gcc 5.4? Is it time to increase that version? > > A look at system gcc versions in major distros: > - ubuntu from 10 years ago (16.04) had 5.3.1 so that will require an > intermediate. 20.04 was EOLd last year and it had 9.3.0. > - Debian 9 had 6.3.0 (and it was EOLd 6 years ago). The latest EOLd > version is Debian 11 with gcc 10.2.1 > - RHEL 7 had 4.8.5 so that will require an intermediate gcc no matter > what, RHEL 8 has 8.5.0 > - SUse 15 starts at 7.5 > > So, if we want to support Suse 15, we could require at least version 7.5 > and consider allowing whatever version of C++ that version supports. > > What other systems are you aware of that our users use and care about > and have sufficient popularity to warrant supporting their system > compiler (without having to use an intermediate build of gcc to bootstrap). > > As an aside, it would be good to have the rationale behind these > prerequisites documented somewhere. I keep hearing some arguments with > some variation but some seem handwavy.
I think it's worth checking whatever we currently document, meaning GCC 5.4. Whether we want to raise that bar is a separate thing - we do want to know if what is documented is no longer going to work. >From a SUSE POV GCC 7.5 works, SLE12 (which has GCC 4.8.5) is no longer receiving newer GCC compilers. Richard. > > I hereby pledge to summarize any replies on the wiki. > > Cheers, > Claudio >
