potential GCC 5.5.0 bug?

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 27 February 2018 at 13:51, Mason wrote:
> On 17/02/2018 01:58, Tim wrote:
>
>> potential GCC 5.5.0 bug?

FTR the bug was filed as
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=84451 and closed as a
dup.

> I'm confused: I thought the GCC 5.x branch stopped being supported
> when the GCC 7.x branch was released, i.e. in May 2017.
>
> Yet, GCC 5.5 was released in October 2017.
>
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-10/msg00064.html
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-10/msg00065.html
>
> Apparently, the branch was closed right after the 5.5 release.
>
> Is this done for the benefit of long-term distributions, such as RHEL?

We don't close the oldest supported branch as soon as a new major
release is out, we usually do one final release from the old branch:
https://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html#timeline

Otherwise any fixes that have accumulated on the old branch never get
released. Waiting until after the new major release also means people
are not trying to fix problems on trunk and also backport things to
the outgoing branch at the same time, racing to get things into the
final release from the branch.