Re: default C versions

[Havard Eidnes <he%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

>> So, what to do?  Nothing or add a USE_LANGUAGES+= setting?
>
> multiple things to do:
>
>   Stop using NetBSD 8.  Seriously, it's past due to upgrade everything
>   running 8 to 9.  I personally have no 8 systems, and I don't worry
>   about things not working on 8.

Get 10.0 out the door! :)

I admit that the only powerpc 8.0 system I run is this bulk build
host, all the others have more recent versions.

But it's showing its usefulness in detecting this particular sort
of issues.

>   Add USE_LANGUAGES to the languages used by upstream.  If upstream uses
>   a language and doesn't document it, file an upstream bug.

OK, I'll see if I can put some effort in this direction.

>   Someone should prototype adding GCC_REQD automatically based on
>   USE_LANGUAGES, if PKGSRC_COMPILER contains (NB: not "is equal to")
>   gcc, and see how that works.  If it's as good as hand-sprinkled
>   GCC_REQD we should start removing the hand-sprinkled ones, which are a
>   kludge because it doesn't work automatically.

When I started looking at this (in particular the KDE build
failures), this popped early up on my wish list.  However, this
could not be done manually, since the KDE ecosystem uses lots of
non-KDE C++ libraries, so you can't confine GCC_REQD setting to
just the KDE ecosystem without also running into possible
compatibility issues.

Part of this issue is the different major version numbering
schemes used for libstdc++ in-tree compared to pkgsrc, you
quickly end up with two different major libstdc++s linked into
your program, and that's probably not going to end well.

I thank you for the other suggestions, I suspect I'll run out of
steam (or 10.0 is released?) before getting to those...

Best regards,

- Håvard