[MereInterest]

> Corollary: hats off to Red Hat for supporting their distro releases for such a lengthy period of time.

This has been my bane at various open source projects, because at some point somebody will say that all currently supported Linux distributions should be supported by a project. This works as a rule of thumb, except for RHEL, which has some truly ancient GCC versions provided in the "extended support" OS versions.

* The oldest supported versions in "production" is RHEL 8, and in "extended support" is RHEL 7. * RHEL 8 (released 2019) provides gcc 8 (released May 2018). RHEL 7 (released 2014) provides gcc 4.8 (released March 2013). * gcc 8 supports C++17, but not C++20. gcc 4.8 supports most of C++11 (some C++ stdlib implementations weren't added until later), but doesn't support C++14.

So the well-meaning cutoff of "support the compiler provided by supported major OS versions" becomes a royal pain, since it would mean avoiding useful functionality in C++17 until mid-2024 (when RHEL 7 went from "production" to "extended support") or mid-2028 (when RHEL 7 "extended support" will end). It's not as bad at the moment, since C++20 and C++23 were relatively minor changes, but C++26 is shaping up to be a pretty useful change, and that wouldn't be usable until around 2035 when RHEL 10 leaves "production".

I wouldn't mind it as much if RHEL named the support something sensible. By the end of a "production" window, the OS is still absolutely suitable as a deployment platform for existing software. Unlike other "production" OS versions, though, it is no longer reasonable as a target for new development at that point.

[Aissen]

RHEL has gcc-toolset-N (previously devtoolset-N-gcc) for that. It's perfectly fine to only support building a project with, say, the penultimate gcc-toolset. Or ask for a payment for support, which is the norm in this (LTS) space.

[MereInterest]

Oh, absolutely, and I usually push for having users installed a more recent compiler. The problem comes when the compatibility policy is defined in terms of the default compiler provided, because then it requires a larger discussion around that entire policy.

[phoronixrly]

> at some point somebody will say that all currently supported Linux distributions should be supported by a project

Ask for payment for extended support as well.

[nemetroid]

GCC 12 is available for RHEL 7.