On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 at 17:58, Paul Koning via Gcc <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Mar 20, 2026, at 6:15 AM, Jakub Jelinek via Gcc <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 09:47:08AM +0000, Claudio Bantaloukas via Gcc wrote: > >> Title says it all really. > >> > >> Why am I asking? I'd like to try writing a build that checks stage1 works > >> with the earliest version of gcc the project wants to support. > >> > >> https://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html currently says: > >> - GCC 5.4 or newer has sufficient support for used C++14 features. > >> - If you need to build an intermediate version of GCC in order to bootstrap > >> current GCC, consider GCC 9.5 > >> > >> Should it use gcc 5.4? Is it time to increase that version? > > > > Yes. No. > > > > We don't increase the minimum requirement just for fun, but when it gives > > significant benefits for the codebase and the earliest supported gcc is > > still old enough (unlike especially rustc but also LLVM we try not to > > require too recent stuff for building). > > That's an excellent principle. Do we apply this to other dependencies? I've > noticed the prerequisite version of things like gmp creeping up. Is that > necessary?
They changed last year, and hadn't changed since 2021 before that. The commit log explains why they were updated: contrib/download_prerequisites: Update GMP, MPFR, MPC [PR120237] Download newer versions of GMP, MPFR and MPC (the latest); besides the usual bug fixes and smaller features, MPFR adds new functions for C23, some of which are already used in GCC in the middle (fold-const-call.cc) and in Fortran 2023 for the 'pi' trignonometric functions, if MPFR is new enough. See https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=120237 for more details.
