A recent bug report led to a discussion about potentially dropping support for pre-4.0 versions of GCC. Adrian Bunk noted, "currently we support 6 different stable gcc release series, and it might be the right time to consider dropping support for the older ones. Are there any architectures still requiring a gcc < 4.0 ?" Russell King noted that on some architectures GCC 3.x is still preferable to the newer 4.x branch, "I want to keep support for gcc 3.4.3 for ARM for the foreseeable future. From my point of view, gcc 4 compilers have been something of a development thing as far as the ARM architecture goes. Also, gcc 3.4.3 is faster and significantly less noisy than gcc 4."

When it was asked how many kernel developers use older version of GCC, Linus Torvalds explained that it really doesn't matter, "it's NOT about 'kernel developers'. It's about random people testing kernels. If we make it harder for people to test kernels, we're going to lose. So no, I vote for *not* cutting off old gcc versions unless it's absolutely fatal."

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has released the linux 2.6.0-test5 kernel, with the following comments:

"Lots of small stuff, as usual. I think the biggest "core" change is the Futex changes by Jamie and Hugh, and the dev_t preparations by Al Viro. But there are ARM and ppc updates here too, and a few drivers have bigger fixes (tg3 driver and the USB gadget interface stand out on diffstat). Watchdog driver updates etc. And Russell King fixed more PCMCIA issues."

Read on for the full changelog.

Additionally, if you followed my recent upgrade howto [story], are running a 2.6.0-test kernel, and are interested in upgrading to 2.6.0-test5, read on for a few simple tips on upgrading with incremental patches.