KWin Now Requires C++14; Perhaps More Of KDE Will Make Use Of Newer C++?

KDE's KWin window manager previously made optional use of C++14 when a supported compiler was now available but is now explicitly requiring a C++14 compiler. With this being a core component for the KDE Plasma desktop, hopefully we'll soon be seeing more of KDE make use of more modern C++ features?

KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin noted that KWin now requires C++14 rather than C++11 for building it. In practical terms, this means a minimum of GCC 5 or LLVM Clang 3.4 for building it, which can basically already be found on almost all modern Linux distributions. This though could cause some snags for distributions like Debian Jessie where GCC 4.9 is the default compiler but on the other hand there is Clang 3.5 to provide working support, but if you plan on building the latest KDE Git yourself, hopefully you are also riding a modern Linux distribution.

Martin commented in the commit upping the requirement, "KWin already used C++14 constructs in a conditional way. This doesn't make much sense today, it's better to just require C++14. For KWin only gcc and clang are currently compilers of relevance. Gcc supports C++14 since version 5 and defaults to C++14 since 6.1. Clang supports C++14 since version 3.4."

We'll see if this leads more of KDE to deciding to up their C++ requirements now, This KWin change will go into affect for KDE Plasma 5.11.