c - There is a real reason for gcc to be so conservative with its dependecies ? ( MPFR, GMP, MPC )

Question

I'm wondering if someone knows why gcc tends to be so conservative about the versions of the libraries to use to compile and build gcc itself .

The main reasons why I'm asking this are :

1. I think that there is a big shift between the "implicitly suggested" versions listed here ( they also appear named in some scripts inside the gcc sources ) and the latest milestones available
2. I think that at some point being that conservative can only increase the chances of carrying bugged and sub-optimal versions of the given library

latest releases available at the moment vs the "implicitly suggested" ones :

      latest     considered by gcc
MPFR  3.1.2      2.4.2
GMP   6.0.0a     4.3.2
MPC   1.0.2      0.8.1

This is just for the vital ones, there are also others like cloog and isl, but here you can see a big difference, those releases are just old .

Does anyone happens to know about some good reasons to do that ? Breaking changes in this 3 libraries ? Stability ? Portability ?

Answer 1

答案在Jonathan Wakely的GCC PR/60933 评论 2中：

过去，我们遇到过最低建议版本有效而​​最新版本阻止 GCC 构建的情况。建议的版本已知可以工作并且已经过全面测试，最新版本可能并非如此。