Re: [PATCH] xen: Update minimum toolchain requirements

[Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 05:54:35PM +0000, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> GCC 4.1.2 is from 2007, and Binutils 2.16 is a similar vintage.  Clang 3.5 is
> from 2014.  Supporting toolchains this old is a massive development and
> testing burden.
> 
> Set a minimum baseline of GCC 5.1 across the board, along with Binutils 2.25
> which is the same age.  These were chosen *3 years ago* as Linux's minimum
> requirements because even back then, they were ubiquitous in distros.  Choose
> Clang/LLVM 11 as a baseline for similar reasons; the Linux commit making this
> change two years ago cites a laudry list of code generation bugs.
> 
> This will allow us to retire a lot of compatiblity logic, and start using new
> features previously unavailable because of no viable compatibility option.
> 
> Merge the ARM 32bit and 64bit sections now they're the same.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx>

IIRC Ld in LLVM 11 should be capable of linking Xen.  I think the
first LLVM release with an LD capable of linking Xen was version 6 or
7.

Thanks, Roger.