Re: Next GNUstep release?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi

> Examples please.  What platforms:
>
> - Are supported by GCC 3.2
> - Are not supported by GCC 4.0 or Clang
> - Are supported by GNUstep?
Don't twist the question. It is not a matter of which platform "could" 
be supported by a newer version of gcc. We are not Apple or some 
commercial company, oh see, Mac 10.99 is out, let's make some 
incompatible SuperApp. We as free software try to give the broadtest 
freedom and this implies limiting as little as possible.
Most people wanted c99, maintaining the burden of special macros was too 
much, we dropped it, fine, I agreed. but jumping directly to gcc 4.0, oh 
pardon, 4.2? If there are no hard, pressing reasons for that, I consider 
it a gratuitous change.

If you just take OpenBSD 4.7, it shipped with gcc 3.3.5. Me are speaking 
of May 2010, not stone age.
Sure, it MAY run gcc 4, it most probably does on x86 too, but why force 
the person to take the hassle?

Take solaris, sunfreeware still offers gcc 3.4.6 . The most commin thing 
you will find even on the latest IRIX boxen is gcc 3.3, because that is 
what SGI gave us. Theoretically, up to gcc 4.6 is supported, I wasn't 
able to build any gcc 4. version yet.

I don't know how gcc support is/was on various platforms.

On windows gcc 3.x is standard on cygwin (even if gcc4 is provided 
extra). Also n mingw in our just previous release (not current) we 
shipped gcc 3..x . Again, it is not stone age.

We don't even know how many platforms we support, why do you want to axe 
them?

We support for example NetBSD 2.0.2 with gcc 3.x on sparc. I have it, it 
works fine and compiles fine. The hardware probably supports newer 
stuff, but current it works.

Supporting a "platform" is not just "latest revision". We are not Apple, 
nor Microsoft nor whatever. We value freedom, which has many aspects. 
How tedious.

Riccardo