which compilers do we want to support with KDE 4 ?

[Joseph Wenninger]

Hi !

I think we should support those compilers used by the new LSB standard and the 
newest stable GCC available. (Even debian sarge has  support for gcc 3.4 
(although you have to modify the qt spec files if you want to use it in 
parallel to the 3.3 version). I don't think it makes sense to write ugly code 
or spread our resources to support hundreds (if you count all the 
distribution patched ones) of gcc versions.

I think it is clear for everybody, why we should support the LSB compliant 
gcc. 
The reason why also try to always support the newest one (in case code there 
breaks, which worked with older version) is that KDE 4 has a long way to go 
till it is released and I don't think that at that point there will be many 
users with a gcc less than 3.4.
I guess if KDE 4 is released, it will have a quite a long  lifecycle, as the 
2.x and 3.x releases had, so it is more important to write standard compliant 
code, since we most probably will encounter many more gcc major releases, 
which will possibly remove more old legacy support. --> We should try to keep 
our code nice, readable and clean looking into hte future with the tradeoff 
of not supporting older gccs (older means <3.4)

What is more important is that we try to support more compilers, especially on 
platforms where gcc is not available or the best choice. I think this is more 
important than supporting old gcc versions.


Kind regards
Joseph Wenninger