GCC 6 Feature Development Will Be Over This Week

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GCC 6 Feature Developement Will Be Over This Week

This week is the last chance for developers to land new features into the GCC 6 compiler stack before it moves onto the next stage of development...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GCC-5-Stage-3-Coming

[Brane215]

Are those few new features worthy of new version ?

I've checked "changes" on their page and there is little to see. One extra feature for MSP430 backend, few new options and that's it. Nothing major. No optimization news, no really new supported arches ( besides Skylake) etc etc.

[Ericg]

Are those few new features worthy of new version ?

I've checked "changes" on their page and there is little to see. One extra feature for MSP430 backend, few new options and that's it. Nothing major. No optimization news, no really new supported arches ( besides Skylake) etc etc.

GCC 6 switches the C++ mode, swapping over to C++11. While I don't want to get into a debate on what constitutes "being worthy of a new version", I leave that up to the developers, the switch could be a breaking change.

[mmstick]

GCC 6 switches the C++ mode, swapping over to C++11. While I don't want to get into a debate on what constitutes "being worthy of a new version", I leave that up to the developers, the switch could be a breaking change.

Actually, that's what GCC 5 did: marked the point when C++14 support was completed and C++11 was made the default ABI for C++. We just received GCC 5 recently and it's not even a year old yet, which broke everything thanks to the new C++11 ABI being made the default. I would have thought that GCC 6 would make C++14 the default ABI.

[Ericg]

Actually, that's what GCC 5 did: marked the point when C++14 support was completed and C++11 was made the default ABI for C++. We just received GCC 5 recently and it's not even a year old yet, which broke everything thanks to the new C++11 ABI being made the default. I would have thought that GCC 6 would make C++14 the default ABI.

I thought GCC5 switch to C11, with C++11 coming in GCC6?

[cb88]

Are those few new features worthy of new version ?

I've checked "changes" on their page and there is little to see. One extra feature for MSP430 backend, few new options and that's it. Nothing major. No optimization news, no really new supported arches ( besides Skylake) etc etc.

That isn't how it works anymore... they are on a version scheme similar to Mozillas... where they increment Major at regular intervals instead of when major features drop. So basically every time a point release on gcc 4.x incremented you'll see a Major version number increase in the new version scheme. So... 4.10.1 = 5.1 (4.10 doesn't exist but would be the number that would have been used had the numbering scheme not changed), alternatively it could have been 5.0.1.

[quaz0r]

gcc5 switched the default to std=gnu11 for C, and made c++11 ABI default but left std=gnu++98 default. gcc6 is making std=gnu++14 the default for c++.

[carewolf]

I thought GCC5 switch to C11, with C++11 coming in GCC6?

You are right. Brane has no idea what he is talking about.

[discordian]

You are right. Brane has no idea what he is talking about.

Not everyone knows about the new numbering scheme or actually thought of it as an april fools joke. (Just imagine talking to some manager about switching your compiler to a different major version and trying to convince him that there arent any big and dangerous changes because version nummers changed to meaningless increments)

And for the reference GCC5 was a disastrous change with switching out big parts of the runtime library or even worse... making it incompatible. GCC6 will have a different default, which you can easily reverse with a commandline switch, but wont cause any big issues coming from GCC5 (ok, maybe lotsa small ones, fixable by setting a flag or using an updated buildsystem).