Re: [PATCH 1/3] Introduce gdb::unique_ptr

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>
> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 20:19:14 +0100
> 
> > Where are the rules and decisions that we won't?
> 
> What sort of rules are you expecting?

What is the oldest version of GCC and C/C++ we are willing to support,
and how many months/years from now we plan to reconsider that, for
example.

> >>> If you suddenly require 6.x or 7.x, they will have no choice.
> >>
> >> Well, that's (an unintended, no doubt) strawman, because no one is
> >> suggesting that.
> > 
> > That's not how I read your messages.  Apologies for my
> > misunderstanding, but I can show you how your words actually made that
> > sound as if you were.
> 
> Please do.  I'd love to learn to be clearer.

Joel:

> Agreed. Mostly, I was thinking of seeing if we can avoid the requirement
> to build a GCC first, if all you are interested in is actually building
> GDB. But, if C++11 is a much cleaner language overall, and its runtime
> provides some nice additions, I think it makes better sense technically
> to align ourselves to it. We've already made a huge requirement jump;
> let's just do it right all the way. That increment doesn't seem all
> that significant compared to requiring a C++ compiler.

You:

> It's just that gcc 6.x is the first version that has switched
> the _default_ mode for C++ to -std=gnu++14.  So until someone writes a
> patch that make gdb's build system enable C++11 support with gcc < 6,
> then the C++11-only code in the gdb::unique_ptr patch that I'm proposing
> will only be active with gcc 6.1 onward.  But really I'm not
> proposing to _require_ 6.x at all.

> You yourself said that you have gcc 5.x available.  I don't really
> understand why we're still arguing about this.

I'm still arguing because you all but decided to declare that to enjoy
GDB to its fullest one has from now on to have GCC 6.x.  GCC 6.1 was
released just this April, so it sounds too drastic to require it only
a few months later.