[webkit-dev] update GCC version?

[Alex Christensen]

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 7:39 AM, Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez <clopez at igalia.com> wrote:
> 
> On 09/01/17 01:09, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
>> On Sun, 2017-01-08 at 18:59 +0100, zan at falconsigh.net wrote:
>>> For the record, GCC 5 has complete C++14 support. The current
>>> requirement is 4.9, so the bump would be minimal.
>>> https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx14
>> We would need to redefine our dependencies policy:
>> 
>> https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK/DependenciesPolicy
>> 
>> We just recently crafted that policy. I kinda like it because it
>> provides a clear formula for deciding whether a compiler is too new to
>> be required or not. It means we would support GCC 4.9 until roughly
>> next spring/summer, one year from the next Debian release. We could
>> either (a) drop Debian from the policy, which I support doing anyway
>> because it does not take our security updates, or we could (b) define
>> the policy in terms of runtime dependencies, rather than build
>> dependencies (which I think Carlos Garcia wanted to do anyway). Either
>> way makes it more likely that distributions will get cut off and choose
>> to not provide WebKit security updates. I would prefer not to do (b),
>> because in practice distributions will just not take our updates if
>> they can't use their default compiler.
>> 
> 
> I strongly oppose to do (a). Also, it is false that Debian doesn't take
> our updates. They take our updates in the backports repository for stable.
> 
> I also don't like (b).
> 
> Another idea is: (c) Drop the "one year after the release" requirement.
> Which means that we could update to minimum GCC version to 5.3 (the one
> in last Ubuntu LTS) when Debian 9 is released (which hopefully is
> expected to happen around the middle of 2017).
> 
> A date that I guess will be near enough to when VS2017 is released.
A mid-2017 upgrade would be quite reasonable.
> 
> This will mean that instead of supporting up to 3-year old dependencies
> we will only support up to 2-year old ones.
> I'm not particular enthusiast about this, but I'm ready to understand
> that supporting 3-year old dependencies is not realistic on a project
> like WebKit.
> 
>> Keep in mind that for a distro to upgrade from GCC 4.9 -> 5.0 is weeks
>> of effort unless you build GCC with the flag that turns on the old C++
>> ABI, but you have to switch to the new ABI eventually, so might as well
>> do it at the same time. I have to support WebKit for a distribution
>> that has been delaying the upgrade for this reason. GCC upgrades are
>> expensive and not fun. Even turning off the ABI switch, upgrading GCC
>> means lots of obscure C++ build failures in packages you're not
>> familiar with.
>> 
>> Michael
> 
> Another (maybe easier) way forward for building it on distros that have
> libstdc++ < 5.0 is to use clang.
> 
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