Linux 5.15 Raises Its GCC Compiler Version Requirement

[szymon_g]

can it be compiled with the different compiler, like the one from intel?

[dekernel]

Thats good
But.. what I don't know it's why GCC 5.1 and not GCC 5.4 or GCC 5.5 that fixes bugs of 5 series? Maybe some distros include 5.1 but not 5.2-5.5?

That is exactly what I was wondering as well. I would expect the latest in the 5.x series which is 5.5 as far as I can tell to be the version targeted.

[George99]

Thats good
But.. what I don't know it's why GCC 5.1 and not GCC 5.4 or GCC 5.5 that fixes bugs of 5 series? Maybe some distros include 5.1 but not 5.2-5.5?

Well just as you said 5.4 or 5.5 are just bug fixing releases w/o new features. So the necessary feature level is satisfied with 5.1.

[CommunityMember]

I'm not sure what switching to C11 would buy in the kernel. I mean I could see some C99 stuff

While the c99 local loop declarations are likely to be the most visible changes throughout the code base moving forward, the c11 static assert functionality may also allow cleanup of some of the existing macro trickery (the BUILD_BUG_xxxx macros would seem obvious candidates to review).

[linner]

You are conflating GCC 11 and C11 here.

For the former the argument is that not everyone is running a bleeding edge distro. There are still supported versions of RHEL and Ubuntu Server that looks Debian stable look modern in comparison (never mind that Debian just released a new stable this year, that's beside the point).

Are you talking about my post? The first part was responding to the comment above mine talking about using gcc 11 and the second part was talking about C11 mentioned in the article posted.

[kprkpr]

Thats good
But.. what I don't know it's why GCC 5.1 and not GCC 5.4 or GCC 5.5 that fixes bugs of 5 series? Maybe some distros include 5.1 but not 5.2-5.5?

[indepe]

It's just the minimum requirement. You're still free to compile it with gcc 11.

I'm not sure what switching to C11 would buy in the kernel. I mean I could see some C99 stuff like inline and stdint but they're probably already using compiler extensions for that. C11 offers nothing much plus even the latest gcc/libc doesn't implement all of it anyway. I don't know?

The documentation is easier available and it's more "standard" in that and similar ways... as far as I can tell, C11 is more generally used by now... in so far as that matters.

[Vorpal]

You are conflating GCC 11 and C11 here.

For the former the argument is that not everyone is running a bleeding edge distro. There are still supported versions of RHEL and Ubuntu Server that looks Debian stable look modern in comparison (never mind that Debian just released a new stable this year, that's beside the point).

[linner]

It's just the minimum requirement. You're still free to compile it with gcc 11.

I'm not sure what switching to C11 would buy in the kernel. I mean I could see some C99 stuff like inline and stdint but they're probably already using compiler extensions for that. C11 offers nothing much plus even the latest gcc/libc doesn't implement all of it anyway. I don't know?

[uid313]

Can't they just raise it to GCC 11?