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> The last de-facto LTS compiler we have had was gcc 2.7.2.1, and it is too old to compile modern C and C++ code. Wont any LTS compiler be "too old" quickly?

• DominikD 12y ago
  Depends on your code. C isn't moving at the pace C++ is so given that most (all?) of the OpenBSD base is C and sh, LTS will work with base, no problem. It's important too that developers are rather happy with what C99 brings to the table so it's a solid reference point for any LTS compiler that would/could happen. It's ports, I think, where the problem is. A lot of that code is C++ so you need compiler and std lib implementation to be able to handle it. But there are two problem. First one: the quality of ports varies from project to project. There's code out there that depends on certain gcc-specific extension, compiler quirks, bugs, you name it. C++ is insanely complex and features just keep piling on. I bet the moment C++17 is available some projects start using certain features because they can. In this case C++ is a moving target and it's hard to imagine LTE C++ compiler for open source projects. Second one: AFAIK only gcc's standard library has support for all of the wacky constructs C++ requires. You're probably out of luck if you try to compile C++ code with thread local storage intermingled with exceptions and you want to depends on non-GPL musl or bionic (which would be important for projects like OpenBSD). And there's code depending on that in ports, you can bet on it. Until these problems are solved[1], OpenBSD won't migrate. LLVM could become the LTS compiler for projects that would benefit from using it, but it doesn't look like a complete operating system is a project that would fit. [1] plus some others, like backends available for more than x86/64, arm, mips, PPC, Sparc and z (or whatever the list is today); OpenBSD supports quite a few esoteric platforms