Since the gap between gcc-2.95 and gcc-4.7.4 is from C to C, it is infinitely less violent than from gcc-4.7.4 to a recent gcc, because from C to c++, the compl

Since the gap between gcc-2.95 and gcc-4.7.4 is from C to C, it is infinitely less violent than from gcc-4.7.4 to a recent gcc, because from C to c++, the complexity and technical cost gap is abysmal (this is an absolute truth). Moving gcc to c++ was a massive mistake from the gcc steering committee, period. The strenght of the words I use is fair here. C is faaaar from perfect, but its c89 iteration with some benign additions from c99/c11 looks like some sort of sweet spot... well I want to beleive that. It won't last when you look at upcoming disaster which is c23. I guess the less worse move for you old programs would be to port their code to certainly not gcc/clang, namely alternative C compilers like tcc/cproc/scc/etc which are not grotestquely and absurdely massive.