CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cgccgmpmpfrmpc
user2485710
user2485710

Reputation: 9801

There is a real reason for gcc to be so conservative with its dependecies ? ( MPFR, GMP, MPC )

I'm wondering if someone knows why gcc tends to be so conservative about the versions of the libraries to use to compile and build gcc itself .

The main reasons why I'm asking this are :

  1. I think that there is a big shift between the "implicitly suggested" versions listed here ( they also appear named in some scripts inside the gcc sources ) and the latest milestones available
  2. I think that at some point being that conservative can only increase the chances of carrying bugged and sub-optimal versions of the given library

latest releases available at the moment vs the "implicitly suggested" ones :

      latest     considered by gcc
MPFR  3.1.2      2.4.2
GMP   6.0.0a     4.3.2
MPC   1.0.2      0.8.1

This is just for the vital ones, there are also others like cloog and isl, but here you can see a big difference, those releases are just old .

Does anyone happens to know about some good reasons to do that ? Breaking changes in this 3 libraries ? Stability ? Portability ?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 168

Answers (1)

vinc17
vinc17

Reputation: 3466

The answer is in GCC PR/60933 Comment 2 by Jonathan Wakely:

We've had situations in the past where the minimum suggested versions work and the latest versions prevented GCC from building. The suggested versions are known to work and have been thoroughly tested, which might not be true of the latest versions.

Upvotes: 2

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