GCC multi-version development layout

[Heime]

On Sunday, April 19th, 2026 at 7:50 PM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc-help <gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Apr 2026, 17:57 Xi Ruoyao via Gcc-help, <gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2026-04-19 at 16:33 +0000, Heime via Gcc-help wrote:
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > When building GCC from a cloned Git source tree using separate
> > > directories (as recommended), the directory structure follows
> > > a clean separation of source, build artifacts, and final
> > > installation.
> > >
> > > With different version of gcc, how would be the typical layout
> > > for specific branches to make patch changes to different gcc
> > > versions with multiple builds and install?
> >
> 
> The layout doesn't matter at all. Anything will work.
> 
> I have a directory ~/src/gcc/gcc for the git repo, where I work on trunk
> and then directories ~/src/gcc/gcc-15 and ~/src/gcc/gcc-14 etc for each
> release branch, using git worktree.
> 
> I install each version to ~/gcc/X where X is 16, 15, 14 etc.
> 
> But it really doesn't matter, anything works.
> 
> 
> > See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree.
> >
> 
> This is definitely the best way to manage the repo, so that every release
> branch is just a worktree using the same repository metadata and config
> settings.

Have been scrutinising the development timeline page

https://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html#timeline

The new GCC versioning scheme announced for GCC 5.1 is 
not reliably described.  For instance, a major version 
number increases GCC X to GCC X+1 (no more GCC X.Y to 
GCC X.Y+1).  

The stage number does not seem to be added as a version
(there is no GCC X.0.1 (for stage 1), GCC X.0.3 (for stage 3)),
and so on.  

It would help if the page got updated with improved descriptions.