On Mon, 24 Apr 2017, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > > If there's no real good reason (brokenness) to deprecate gcc-4.1, I would not > > do it.I guess most people using old compilers know what they're doing. > > What I'm trying to find out first is whether "people regularly using 10+ > year old compilers for the latest kernels" is a strict subset of "people in > Geert's household". Well I do not live with Geert TBH. > Given that none of the three architectures I looked at (arm, mips, x86) > has successfully built any defconfig for a few years, it's quite possible > that it's just you ;-) The other architectures that were around 10 years > ago (so they might have someone who still has old toolchain binaries) > and that still exist today are alpha, cris, frv, ia64, m32r, parisc, powerpc, > s390, sh, sparc and xtensa. The first six are similar to m68k in that the > hardware is mostly obsolete and the ports are kept around to support > those old systems that might also use ancient toolchains, or new > toolchains may be unmaintained or buggy, which could be a reason > to keep 4.1 supported or at least try to find out if 4.1 (or even any other > version) still works at all. Huh? $ git log -1 commit 5a7ad1146caa895ad718a534399e38bd2ba721b7 Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sun Apr 23 16:53:00 2017 -0700 Linux 4.11-rc8 $ /usr/bin/time make ARCH=mips CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- decstation_defconfig vmlinux >/dev/null 2>&1 1014.19user 71.47system 19:33.24elapsed 92%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k18764inputs+242504outputs (704major+9549837minor)pagefaults 0swaps $ mipsel-linux-gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. $ Methinks it builds just fine. Maciej