[llvm-dev] [RFC] Increase minimum supported GCC version for building LLVM to 4.8

[Teresa Johnson via llvm-dev]

According to the documentation at
http://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#software, compiling LLVM with GCC
requires at least version 4.7.0. However, there are apparently several
problems building current LLVM/Clang with gcc 4.7.X. This proposal is to
increase the minimum required GCC to 4.8.

This is split off of the thread started here:
   http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-October/105742.html
which is a fairly recent regression in being able to compile LTO.cpp with
GCC 4.7.4, which I tracked down to a known GCC bug.

According to James Knight, it is not the only place where GCC 4.7.X cannot
compile the clang toolchain, which apparently hasn't been buildable by GCC
4.7.X in >3 months:
   http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-October/105825.html

Renato also suggests bumping the minimum to 4.8, as that is the oldest
shipped version in most stable Linux distributions:
   http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-October/105826.html

We currently have many buildbots building with GCC 4.8, but none with GCC
4.7.X, which is why this issue was not discovered previously.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Teresa

-- 
Teresa Johnson |  Software Engineer |  tejohnson at google.com |  408-460-2413
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