Re: Pkgsrc issue

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

> I think I may have struck a nerve.

I'm not sure I understand what that's getting at.  It's not a
particularly "sensitive topic" to me or us in general, I would
think.  The fact that english is a second language for me may
prevent me from interpreting this comment appropriately.

> The consensus is that 8.2 is very old and I should upgrade.
>
> As a software developer, I understand completely.
>
> As a lowly user, I never want to upgrade *anything* that is
> working - ever. (You _never_ trade non-working for working, you
> trade the old bugs for a new set of bugs. ;-> )

I can understand the desire to avoid needless upgrades.

However, software packages undergo maintenance to fix bugs and
the odd security issue, and also undergo further development to
extend their functionality.  Sometimes this means that the
upstream developer or developer community decides that a
particular new C++ feature would be useful to use or rely on for
the package.  This means that the required support in the
compiler is increased.  There's a plethora of "new-ish C++
variants", such as c++11, c++14, c++17 and c++20 (ref. the
documentation of the -std= argument in the g++ man page on a 10.0
system), so there's plenty to choose from...

Since we are not in the habit of upgrading the in-tree compiler
along a maintenance release branch, the 8.x NetBSD releases are
stuck with whatever compiler 8.0 shipped with all those years
ago, and its support for any number of those newer varints may
not be there at all or be deficient in some manner.  To a bit
less degree this applies to C as well, and certainly to rust,
where it appears to be fairly common to insist on the latest and
greatest compiler.  For rust I struck this problem a relatively
short while ago, where I found that the built-in LLVM shipped
with rust now requires a newer C++ variant than what is supported
by the C++ compiler 8.x.

So while I can sympathise, the world keeps on turning, and
sometimes the desire to keep updating packages means that it
might trigger the need for an OS upgrade process (bringing in a
new major version of gcc) as well.

Best regards,

- Håvard