Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel

Posted Feb 27, 2018 11:41 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel by comio
Parent article: Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel

Don't enterprise distros stick to the same major kernel version no matter how old? If so, why not allow GCC 4.3 for kernel 3.10 (for example), but insist on GCC 4.9 for a current kernel?

Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel

Posted Feb 27, 2018 15:47 UTC (Tue) by mageta (subscriber, #89696) [Link] (1 responses)

AFAIK:

Redhat does. Suse does upgrades with service-packs. Canonical sticks to the original kernel, but for a shorter time and provides no hardware-enablement at all via that old version, but with new kernels (hwe kernels) instead. So this could hit the two later.

Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel

Posted Feb 27, 2018 16:22 UTC (Tue) by kiko (subscriber, #69905) [Link]

For Ubuntu, I think we're fine.

While 12.04 and 14.04 LTS are still formally supported, they won't receive modern kernels via HWE; in reality only 4 kernel versions are ever available to be installable on any given Ubuntu release. See the "Kernel release end of life" for details at https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life -- but the summary is that neither of them would be affected by a GCC requirement uplift.

For 16.04 LTS, similarly, the last HWE kernel received will be 4.15, which is the kernel release targeted for the next LTS, 18.04 LTS, due in April. So it too would be unaffected by an uplift in GCC version.

Bionic itself comes with GCC 7.3 (and 6.4) which should be acceptable for any kernel version it ends up receiving.

Shedding old architectures and compilers in the kernel

Posted Feb 27, 2018 19:12 UTC (Tue) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]

Because we want to allow someone running a currently supported RH release to be able to build a current kernel.