Why can't gcc-4.2.1 build usable libreoffice?

[Matthias Andree]

Am 19.02.2013 19:54, schrieb Mikhail T.:

> These were, indeed, complaints, but not about the port "not working
> after I broke it". My complaint is that, though the port "works" out of
> the box, the office@ maintainers have given up on the base compiler too
> easily -- comments in the makefile make no mention of any bug-reports
> filed with anyone, for example. It sure seems, no attempts were made to
> analyze the failures... I don't think, such "going with the flow" is
> responsible and am afraid, the inglorious days of building a special
> compiler just for the office will return...

Feel free to debug MyFavouriteOffice to the point where it will build
with base GCC, but don't complain if the *office teams don't look at
your patches.

If there are compiler bugs in gcc 4.2, there is no place where anyone
will care for anyone else to file them, not upstream (abandoned 4.2.X
years ago), not FreeBSD (decided to switch to clang instead).

What is your point, besides getting software from the museum to build
stuff from the relative future?

> LibreOffice's own Native_Build page
> <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Native_Build> makes no
> mention of a required compiler version. Unless a compiler is documented
> to not support a required feature, it is supposed to work. Thus, filing
> a bug-report with LibreOffice could've been fruitful -- if it is the
> code, rather than the toolchain, that are at fault...

That will likely only buy you the compiler requirement you are currently
missing, and it is likely to be the exact version that they used to
build their official binaries, with a "newer versions may work, but no
promises" attached.

Feel free to query the LibreOffice developers if, and according to which
conditions, they'd take your patches to make LO build with our decrepit
gcc 4.2.1.

> Am I really the only one here disturbed by the fact, that the compilers
> shipped as cc(1) and/or c++(1) in our favorite operating system's most
> recent stable versions (9.1 and 8.3) are considered buggy? Not just old
> -- and thus unable to process more modern language-standards/features,
> but buggy -- processing those features incorrectly? There is certainly
> nothing in our errata <http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/errata.html>
> about it...

You have not yet proven that either the base compilers or LibreOffice
are at fault.