GCC 13 Progresses To Stage 4 "Regression Fixes Only" Development

The GCC 13 code compiler has entered its stage four of development today where the focus now is only on regression fixes until eliminating all the highest priority regressions so that the GCC 13.1 stable release can then happen in the next 2~3 months.

Richard Biener of SUSE announced today that the GNU Compiler Collection is now under its "stage four" development until release time. The emphasis is on fixing regressions while documentation fixes are also allowed. Per the GCC documentation on stage four:

"During this period, the only (non-documentation) changes that may be made are changes that fix regressions. Other important bugs like wrong-code, rejects-valid or build issues may be fixed as well. All changes during this period should be done with extra care on not introducing new regressions - fixing bugs at all cost is not wanted. Note that the same constraints apply to release branches. This period lasts until stage 1 opens for the next release."

Today's status report has 37 bugs of P1 priority -- the highest level -- and that's four more bugs since the prior report. There are 497 P2 regressions, 88 P3 regressions, 256 P4 regressions, and 24 P5 regressions. Those more than two dozen P1 regressions either need to be fixed or demoted to a lower-tier priority before the GCC 13.1 stable release can happen, which is usually in the March~April timeframe.

There are many features coming with GCC 13 including AMD Zen 4 "znver4" support, support for upcoming Intel CPUs like Granite Rapids / Sierra Forest / Grand Ridge / Meteor Lake, more C23 and C++23 features are implemented, improved C++20 and C++23 feature support in libstdc++, OpenMP reverse offload as well as other new OpenMP 5.1/5.2 features, GCC LTO now supports making use of the GNU Make job server with named pipes by default, AMD Instinct MI200 offload support, additional RISC-V extensions being wired up, and a range of other improvements. GCC 13 as this next annual compiler release should be another great update especially with bringing support for next-generation Intel processors and a lot of punctual C23/C++23 features.