GCC 11 Proposal Would Default To C++17 Level Features

Since last year's GCC 9 release the C++17 support has been considered stable and with the changeover to it as the default C++ dialect having not happened for the recent GCC 10 release, developers are now looking at increasing the default C++ version to 17 for next year's GCC 11 release.

Red Hat's Marek Polacek sent out the patch this weekend that would change the default dialect to C++17 from the existing C++14 default. This only affects the GCC C++ compiler behavior when no other -std= is specified whether it be C++17 or even the in-progress C++20 support as well as falling back to older C++ versions.

C++14 has been the default since GCC 6 and thus for GCC 11 they are looking at bumping it to C++17. By the time of GCC 11's release a year from now their C++20 support should largely be in order, but still will likely be too immature for making it the default at that time, more than likely waiting until GCC 12 or so. Again though for those wanting C++20 features it can be easily set via the -std switch.

Given GCC 11 development only recently opened and feature work happening over the next several months, the patch proposal in defaulting the C++ front-end to C++17 will more than likely happen this cycle. So you can expect this change and a lot more building up for the GNU Compiler Collection over the coming months.