A recent bug report led to a discussion about potentially dropping support for pre-4.0 versions of GCC. Adrian Bunk noted, "currently we support 6 different stable gcc release series, and it might be the right time to consider dropping support for the older ones. Are there any architectures still requiring a gcc < 4.0 ?" Russell King noted that on some architectures GCC 3.x is still preferable to the newer 4.x branch, "I want to keep support for gcc 3.4.3 for ARM for the foreseeable future. From my point of view, gcc 4 compilers have been something of a development thing as far as the ARM architecture goes. Also, gcc 3.4.3 is faster and significantly less noisy than gcc 4."

When it was asked how many kernel developers use older version of GCC, Linus Torvalds explained that it really doesn't matter, "it's NOT about 'kernel developers'. It's about random people testing kernels. If we make it harder for people to test kernels, we're going to lose. So no, I vote for *not* cutting off old gcc versions unless it's absolutely fatal."

The question was recently raised on the lkml why such a wide range of GCC [forum] versions were being actively supported by the Linux kernel. One reason offered was, "because the new compilers are a lot slower", an argument that left some perplexed. "Why is this an issue when compiling a kernel? How often do you compile your kernel?"

Linux creator Linus Torvalds agreed that the speed of the compiler was indeed one of the reasons that older versions are still supported, "for some people that is literally where _most_ of the CPU cycles go". Beyond that, he pointed out that earlier versions of the GCC 3.x compiler would generate worse code than 2.95.x, and that they were simply buggier. Linus explained, "for a _long_ time, the only reason to upgrade gcc was literally C++ support: basic C support was getting _worse_ with new compilers in pretty much every regard." He went on to add, "things seem to have improved a bit lately. The gcc-3.x series was basically not worth it for plain C until 3.3 or so."

Mark Mitchell commented today on the gcc-announce mailing list that the recent GCC 3.3.1 release [story] includes a new file titled 'README.SCO', expressing outrage at SCO's recent legal actions against the Linux kernel. From the document:

"As all users of GCC will know, SCO has recently made claims concerning alleged copyright infringement by recent versions of the operating system kernel called Linux. SCO has made irresponsible public statements about this supposed copyright infringement without releasing any evidence of the infringement, and has demanded that users of Linux, the kernel most often used with the GNU system, pay for a license. This license is incompatible with the GPL, and in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation such a demand unquestionably violates the GNU General Public License under which the kernel is distributed."

The statement goes on to discuss the possibility of dropping GCC support for the SCO Unix platform in protests, noting however that at this time it would be more of an inconvenience to users than SCO itself, "but we cannot indefinitely continue to ignore the aggression against our community taken by a party that has long profited from the commercial distribution of our programs. We urge users of SCO Unix to make clear to SCO their disapproval of the company's aggression against the free software community." Read on for the full statement, written by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen.

GCC 3.2.3 - the last in the 3.2 series - was released on April 25. It is a bugfix release, no new features in there. This one is a follow up to GCC 3.2.2 [story].

GCC 3.2.2 was released today. Gabriel Dos_Reis announced the release saying:

"This release is a bug-fix release in the GCC 3.2 series. There are no new major features; however there are many bugs fixed.

GCC 3.0.4, the last of the 3.0 series (the next release will be 3.1, around April 15) has been released. It's a "bugfix release" that (you guessed it) has many bugfixes. Read on for the full announcement.

New in 3.0.4:

• GCC 3.0 now supports newer versions of the NetBSD operating system, which use the ELF object file format, on x86 processors.