Re: [gentoo-alt] Restructuring the bootstrap (or: getting rid of gcc 4.2)

[Ruud Koolen]

On Sunday 02 February 2014 20:55:04 Francois Bissey wrote:
> On 3/02/2014, at 6:34, Ruud Koolen <redlizard@g.o> wrote:
> >But gcc and friends are specifically designed to be buildable on any
> >ridiculous old system, and the use of other tools hasn't changed between
> > my bootstrap process and the current one. Again, can you elaborate and
> > give a concrete example?
>
> Ridiculously old systems? AIX will come with gcc 4.2 if you are lucky. I
> never managed to compile a recent gcc with an IBM compiler.

Interesting; this should be possible. I'll see whether I can test this.

> gcc 4.8 has raised the bar significantly in terms of how new your compiler
> needs to be.

That is a very good point. My plans and tests so far were in terms of gcc 4.7, 
but gcc 4.8 and later require a C++ compiler to build, which is not something 
we want to rely on. Thus, upgrading the bootstrap compiler would upgrade to 
4.7 only and no further, and I don't see a way to change that in the future.

> In the case of AIX I had to build and use a more recent gcc (4.6.x or 4.7.x
> I don’t remember) before being able to gcc 4.8.1. I also manage some SLES
> 11SP1 ppc64 boxes, gcc 4.8.1 will not build with the gcc 4.3.4 that come as
> default. I don’t think it even compile with the alternate gcc 4.5 toolchain
> they provide.
>
> François

What about gcc 4.7?

-- Ruud