Re: mpfr, gmp and mpc versions prior to 4.6.0 and download_prerequisites

[Toebs Douglass <toby at winterflaw dot net>]

On 13/04/17 20:09, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> On 13 April 2017 at 16:24, Toebs Douglass wrote:
>> So the first question is : does anyone have anything useful they could
>> tell me about finding out this information?  which is to say,
>> recommended dependency versions for GCC 4.4.7 and earlier, back to and
>> including 4.1.2.
> 
> The prerequisites for a release are documented in gcc/doc/install.texi
> in the sources of that release.

Thankyou, Jonathan.

I was aware of that page, but I didn't know it would be easily
accessible in the release archive.

I was actually using the Wayback Machine to view historical versions
published immediately after a given GCC was released.  However, I
stopped because it seemed to make no sense, where bugfix releases of
older GCC series are interleaved, chronologically, with each other, so
that page seemingly could never be right.

Actually having the correct page for each release addresses that concern.

One note though - that install page seems to be written with x86_64 in
mind.  For aarch64, where support was added in GCC 4.8.0, libgmp 4.3.2
fails, as aarch64 support for libgmp was only added in 6.0.0 (at least,
so says the release note for 6.0.0 - I think I have in fact compiled
4.8.0 with 5.1.1, and it worked, but I would want to double-check that
now before making that claim properly).

>> My second question is whether or not people have any idea if graphite
>> was typically compiled in (it's optional) prior to 4.8.0?  I get the
>> impression it could have been a bit buggy/experimental prior to that
>> point, and so was perhaps not normally used.
> 
> It is still not widely used today. Graphite optimisations are very
> unlikely to make any difference for your code. I wouldn't bother with
> Graphite if I were you.

Thankyou.  I was hoping not to bother and currently am already not using
these libraries.