I mentioned a few months ago that I had similar struggles with the gcc 4.9 requirement. I've been trying to build JavaScriptCore in a way that it is redistributable for Steam Linux/SteamOS (aka "Steam Runtime"). For those that don't know, building redistributable binaries is a nightmare in the Linux eco-system. (Linus Torvalds has ranted about this...see Debconf 14 as an example.) Steam is one of the most ambitious attempt to address/solve this problem, where Steam developers can actually just compile their application in Steam Runtime and their binaries should work everywhere Steam works (and interestingly some other places.)
I won't go into all the details, but this means being tied to Steam Runtime's toolchain, so they are effectively another distro. I previously mentioned they ship gcc 4.8.1 and clang 3.6.0. I had a lot of problems with the gcc 4.9 requirement and consider myself lucky clang 3.6 didn't have any problems. But I'm worried this current mentality of ditching 3 year old compilers is going to break me at some point and leave me stranded. I am not a distro maintainer so I have no say in what gets shipped. And if I want to distribute binaries that work on other platforms, I can't simply upgrade my compiler. Updating everything in general is not easy or fast. I can turn this on WebKit and criticize why doesn't WebKit compile under Visual Studio 2015? Cross-platform takes care and time. Thanks, Eric _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev
