On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 12:29:50PM +0100, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote: > A new version is understandable. But why is an old version required? > One thing is an enterprise distro that is "current" or "supported" and still > stuck with gcc 4.1 because that is the version they decided to include in > their release. This is sad. But you might want to ask yourself why you want > the latest kernel but an old gcc / binutils. To help isolate changes. If you constantly upgrade everything, how do you bug hunt for a breakage? How do you know whether it's created by the kernel, or by (eg) a later version of gcc miscompiling the kernel. You have a large amount of code to start bug hunting through. Sticking with particular tool versions long-term means that you build up confidence in it - yes, sure, latent bugs exist, but it's easier to bug hunt if you aren't constantly suspecting that your tools might be broken. For example, I build kernels with: gcc binutils built on 32-bit ARM 4.7.4 2.25 April/May 2015 64-bit ARM 4.9.2 2.25.51.20150219 Feb/April 2015 I'm not anticipating upgrading them for some time yet - the only one which may get upgraded is the 64-bit binutils since later kernels now complain about a missing errata workaround in that toolchain version. I do still have some older toolchains around on some of my ARM boxes though, even a GCC 3 version with ARM TLS support for faster builds! -- RMK's Patch system: http://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/ FTTC broadband for 0.8mile line: currently at 9.6Mbps down 400kbps up according to speedtest.net. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kbuild" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
