GCC 5.5 Released, That's It For GCC5

[GdeR]

Bugfixes while maintaining compatibility with old versions. An old distro is going to be built around a specific version of GCC. That said forcing users to do an upgrade is never a good idea. Some users won't be able to.

Months ago I asked why new bugfix releases of GCC never land to Debian Stable repositories and I was answered, in this very forum, that all boils down to compatibility (as in binary compatibility). I thought that switching from 6.3 to 6.4 wouldn’t break any such compatibility and that it would just be a welcome update since that minor version number doesn’t imply any different features but only bugfixes (and stable distributions should care about stability and fixes in the first place). But I’ve never seen this happening in Debian, Jessie is still stuck to 4.9.2 (while 4.9.3 and 4.9.4 have been out for years now) and they will never make 6.3 -> 6.4 possible in Stretch. So now I’m wondering what kind of compatibility are we talking about if not even ”stable” distributions like Debian take advantage of such an update? I’m not an ABI expert, so I’d like to understand why this update isn’t possible and what kind of systems the GCC maintainers intend to address by maintaining such an old release, which we’ll agree isn’t an effortless task.

[GdeR]

True, but new releases don't just bring bug fixes, but they bring new bugs, too. Newer releases sometimes remove support for older hardware, they introduce newer standards and they use updated default settings.

In general, it works like you said, but following GCC version scheme no such change you mention takes place, minor version numbers like the 4 in 6.4 only mean bugfixes and such fixes very rarely bring new bugs, since their testing suite makes easy to identify, count and list bugs and regressions by priority. New bugfix updates only get released when these numbers reach a certain point.

[sdack]

In general, it works like you said, but ...

No, it works exactly like I said and I did say "sometimes". Learn to read and don't argue out of context.

[cj.wijtmans]

Good point on new bugs.. prime example, the gimp devs don't reccomend building gimp with GCC-7.x, but using an older build. there appears to be some problems/regressions with GCC-7.x for gimp / gegl...

Yeah but this is something GIMP should fix ASAP. GCC6+ has many new useful features that people are eager to use like stable LTO.

[GdeR]

No, it works exactly like I said and I did say "sometimes". Learn to read and don't argue out of context.

No, idiot. I'm just talking about GCC and THIS is the context we are talking about. Learn to read their documentation and YOU don't argue out of context.

[sdack]

No, idiot. I'm just talking about GCC and THIS is the context we are talking about. Learn to read their documentation and YOU don't argue out of context.

No, you're the idiot, because nobody cares for what you want to talk about. You are not the context here. The article is.

[GdeR]

No, you're the idiot, because nobody cares for what you want to talk about. You are not the context here. The article is.

Well, I love you too.. but seriously, what the hell do you want from me? I wasn’t being offensive with my earlier reply, but then you went on saying “learn to read”, that’s not the greatest attitude to get a peaceful answer, is it? I’m so pissed now that I don’t even care to explain what’s the point I was trying to make. If you get too personal, I just stand with my view: you’re a hacking idiot.