which compilers do we want to support with KDE 4 ?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Saturday 21 January 2006 16:57, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> Dne sobota 21 leden 2006 17:42 Kurt Pfeifle napsal(a):
> > On Saturday 21 January 2006 10:32, Alexander Neundorf wrote:

>  I think we can shorten this to "gcc version 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 4.0 are 
> incompatible with each other".
> 
> > If you decide now that you will support many different GCC versions
> > with KDE-4.0, you will for sure also get these many different binaries
> > built. And you'll have to support them then too. (Even if only 20% will
> > be on 3.2, they'll tend to take 80% of your support and development time,
> > I promise you this).
> 
>  That's not the point at all. KDE provides only source code, right? 

Right.

But the bugzilla entries mostly don't reference source code, but compiled
binaries.

>  It's up to  
> distros to decide which (supported) gcc they'll use and if MyFooDistro 
> decides it goes with gcc4.0 only or something else, so be it, it's not our 
> problem.

Right.

But *this* discussion isn't about distros in a year -- its about what 
compiler versions KDE4 developers should use now for KDE4 development,
and how this will influence what big or small a zoo of compiler versions 
everybody (users, developers, maintainers, packagers...) will be having 
to handle in the future.

> It's also not a problem of our users, because they will first try to  
> compile KDE4 in a year (users brave or insane enough to compile KDE4 now 
> don't count), but we developers should compile KDE4 already now.
> 
>  This is only about how much trouble we'll get by making KDE compile with 
> older gcc versions vs how much work we'll loose by waiting for some people to 
> upgrade. And, before we jump the gun, it'd be good to know these two. So, can 
> somebody with older gcc summarize how much doesn't work and how difficult 
> it'd be to support it? Then we can judge, or, if there won't be an answer to 
> this, we'll at least know that there aren't that many people interested in 
> using older gcc's.

Good suggestion.

Cheers,
Kurt