GCC multi-version development layout

[Jonathan Wakely]

On Sun, 19 Apr 2026, 23:30 Heime, <heimeborgia@protonmail.com> wrote:

> 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.


That's correct.


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


I don't see a problem with it, what improvement are you suggesting?



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