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That's obviously not their logic at all. Trying to diminish this to "OP refuses to update compiler" is frankly disrespectful of them & their actual point.

pjc50 5y ago
Their claim is "you should be able to compile git linux git with gcc 4.7.4" which is a completely arbitrary requirement.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  It's not completely arbitrary. Notice that they said "the last C GCC". After that version, GCC started using C++ in the compiler itself. I can see why some people would see that as a complexity line that must not be crossed, as it makes bootstrapping harder.
  - arghwhat 5y ago
    What GCC is written in only matters if you intent to write your own compiler to compile it - which as you have no compiler yet would likely have to be written in assembly. Otherwise you need to download a prebuilt compiler anyway, and whether that is C11 or C++11 is rather unimportant.
charcircuit 5y ago
To me their logic is that their old tool works just fine so they shouldn't have to upgrade it. He essentially said that having a plan to upgrade to a newer version of the language or to a more up to date toolchain is planned obsolescence. He seems to want to be able to use his specific version of his compiler to the end of time. To me I don't quite get the justifications of this perspective as GCC is free software and it is simple to upgrade.
- gmfawcett 5y ago
  Thank you, that's a great reply to his comment. My first impression of his comment was that the kernel project shouldn't chase the latest-and-best compiler releases -- or similarly the most recent C language changes; rather, a boring-technology approach is sensible for such a foundational project as Linux. I see your point, though, that GCC is simple to upgrade. (If I were making the tech decision here, I'd want to ensure that newer GCC's didn't introduce features that I thought were too risky for my project, or at least that I could disable/restrict those features with flags.)
  - pm215 5y ago
    GCC 5.1 (released in 2015) is hardly latest-and-best, though: moving the version bar up only very slowly and with an eye to what distros are using as their compiler version is a pretty solid boring-technology approach, in my view.

pjc50 5y ago

Their claim is "you should be able to compile git linux git with gcc 4.7.4" which is a completely arbitrary requirement.

mwcampbell 5y ago
It's not completely arbitrary. Notice that they said "the last C GCC". After that version, GCC started using C++ in the compiler itself. I can see why some people would see that as a complexity line that must not be crossed, as it makes bootstrapping harder.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  What GCC is written in only matters if you intent to write your own compiler to compile it - which as you have no compiler yet would likely have to be written in assembly. Otherwise you need to download a prebuilt compiler anyway, and whether that is C11 or C++11 is rather unimportant.

charcircuit 5y ago

To me their logic is that their old tool works just fine so they shouldn't have to upgrade it. He essentially said that having a plan to upgrade to a newer version of the language or to a more up to date toolchain is planned obsolescence. He seems to want to be able to use his specific version of his compiler to the end of time. To me I don't quite get the justifications of this perspective as GCC is free software and it is simple to upgrade.

gmfawcett 5y ago
Thank you, that's a great reply to his comment. My first impression of his comment was that the kernel project shouldn't chase the latest-and-best compiler releases -- or similarly the most recent C language changes; rather, a boring-technology approach is sensible for such a foundational project as Linux. I see your point, though, that GCC is simple to upgrade. (If I were making the tech decision here, I'd want to ensure that newer GCC's didn't introduce features that I thought were too risky for my project, or at least that I could disable/restrict those features with flags.)
- pm215 5y ago
  GCC 5.1 (released in 2015) is hardly latest-and-best, though: moving the version bar up only very slowly and with an eye to what distros are using as their compiler version is a pretty solid boring-technology approach, in my view.