which compilers do we want to support with KDE 4 ?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Friday 27 January 2006 19:49, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I guess you have noticed, I had started a poll on www.kdedevelopers.org. The 
> result after 432 votes:
> 
> gcc < 2.95:   0% (1 vote)
> gcc 2.95:     1% (3 votes)
> gcc 3.0/3.1:  0% (0 votes)
> gcc 3.2:      0% (2 votes)
> gcc 3.3:     11% (46 votes)
> gcc 3.4:     29% (127 votes)
> gcc 4.0:     45% (193 votes)
> gcc >= 4.1:  14% (60 votes)
> 
> So from the developer POV, I'd say gcc 3.3 should be supported, this would 
> force only 1.5 % percent of the developers to upgrading.
> Supporting only gcc >= 4.0 would bring problems for 41 % of the developers, so 
> this would be no good idea.

Supporting GCC-3.3 means also supporting the "older" C++ ABI.
It means having to support builds and runtimes that use(d) 
libstdc++.so.5 as well as those that use libstdc++.so.6.

The switch to the newer ABI happened with GCC-3.4 (though that
in itself does not yet gain a reliable basis, because GCC-4.x 
which in theory should have kept the same ABI did also introduce
subtle changes between the real world GCC-3.4 and 4.0 builds, 
due to bugfixes (and patching by vendors) that happened.

You can read more about GCC ABI changes and libstdc++ problems
on the www.autopackage.org website...

So I (a bloody amateur) am asking if it wouldnt be "cleaner" 
to make GCC-3.4 the minimum requirement for building KDE-4.0,
(especially if you think 1 more year into the future, once it
will become relevant to the outside world)?