GCC 8.1 Released

[Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>]

We are proud to announce the next, major release of the
GNU Compiler Collection.

Are you tired of your existing compilers?
Want fresh new language features and better optimizations?
Make your day with the new GCC 8.1!

GCC 8.1 is a major release containing substantial new
functionality not available in GCC 7.x or previous GCC releases.

The C++ front-end now has experimental support for some parts of the
upcoming C++2a draft, with the -std=c++2a and -std=gnu++2a options, and the
libstdc++ library has some further C++17 and C++2a draft library features
implemented too.

This releases features significant improvements in the emitted diagnostics,
including improved locations, location ranges and fix-it hints (especially
in the C++ front-end), and various new warnings have been added.

Profile driven optimizations have been significantly improved, on x86
functions are now split into hot and cold regions by default.  The link time
optimizations now have a new way of emitting the DWARF debug information,
which makes LTO optimized code more debuggable.  New loop optimizers have
added and existing improved and some, like -ftree-loop-distribution,
-floop-unroll-and-jam and -floop-interchange have been enabled by default at
-O3.

The AArch64 target now supports the Scalable Vector Extension, which
features vectors with runtime determined number of elements.

Some code that compiled successfully with older GCC versions might require
source changes, see http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-8/porting_to.html for
details.

See

  https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-8/changes.html

for more information about changes in GCC 8.1.

This release is available from the FTP servers listed here:

 http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

The release is in gcc/gcc-8.1.0/ subdirectory.

If you encounter difficulties using GCC 8.1, please do not contact me
directly.  Instead, please visit http://gcc.gnu.org for information about
getting help.

Driving a leading free software project such as GNU Compiler Collection
would not be possible without support from its many contributors.
Not to only mention its developers but especially its regular testers
and users which contribute to its high quality.  The list of individuals
is too large to thank individually!

Please consider a donation to the GNU Toolchain Fund to support the
continued development of GCC!