Re: changes requesting for GCC 17 Release Criteria (secondary targets)

On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 4:37 PM Richard Biener
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 9:25 AM Dongsheng Song <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I downloaded the archives of the most recent seven GCC test-result
> > emails. The results of the AI analysis are presented below for your
> > reference:
> >
> > Key Points:
> >
> > - powerpc64le and powerpc64 combined account for 67% of the total;
> > they are clearly the dominant platforms, evidently supported by a
> > highly active fleet of automated testing bots.
> > - x86_64 spans four operating systems (Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD, and
> > Solaris) and accounts for approximately 16% of the total.
> > - aarch64-linux-gnu accounts for only 3.5%; considering the widespread
> > adoption of ARM servers, this level of test coverage is notably low.
> > - riscv64-linux-gnu accounts for a mere 38 reports (0.3%), while
> > loongarch64-linux-gnu accounts for only 5 reports; test coverage for
> > these emerging architectures is severely inadequate.
> > - Traditional or niche architectures—such as ia64, mmix, mips64el, and
> > vax—each account for only 1 to 3 reports, indicating that they are
> > currently receiving only minimal maintenance support.
> >
> > The statistical results are presented below (Data scope: September
> > 2025 through March 2026—a 7-month period—comprising 15,151 test
> > reports across 29 distinct Multiarch platforms):
>
> That's interesting - did you manually filter the GCC version tested to
> a single one?  Otherwise the result isn't telling much, at least for the
> entries with very few reports, but maybe also in general.
>

Here are the statistical analysis results, including the GCC major
version numbers:

## GCC Test Results Mailing List Analysis

Data source: gcc-testresults mailing list archives, 2025-09 ~ 2026-03
(7 months), 15,151 test reports across 29 multiarch
targets.

### Key Findings

- GCC 16 (development trunk) accounts for 58.1% of all reports — most
test bots track the master branch.
- powerpc64le + powerpc64 dominate with 67% of all reports, clearly
driven by very active automated test bots. They are the
only architecture with continuous testing across all GCC versions
(12/13/14/15/16).
- x86_64 spans 4 OSes (Linux/Darwin/FreeBSD/Solaris) totaling ~16%,
but given its market dominance, this is surprisingly
low.
- aarch64-linux-gnu has only 3.5% coverage — underwhelming given the
rapid adoption of ARM servers.
- x86_64-darwin (684 reports) is almost entirely GCC 16, meaning macOS
testers only care about the latest development
version.
- GCC 12 has only 467 reports, mostly from powerpc64 — other
architectures have essentially stopped testing GCC 12.
- riscv64-linux-gnu has just 38 reports (0.3%) with zero coverage for
GCC 14, showing a significant gap.
- loongarch64-linux-gnu has only 5 reports total — severely undertested.
- avr-elf is one of the few embedded targets with relatively even
coverage across GCC 13/14/15/16.
- Legacy/niche architectures like ia64, mmix, mips64el, and vax have
1–3 reports each, at bare minimum maintenance level.

### Full Breakdown by Multiarch and GCC Major Version

| Rank | Multiarch | Total | GCC 12 | GCC 13 | GCC 14 | GCC 15 | GCC 16 |
|------|-----------|-------|--------|--------|--------|--------|--------|
| 1 | powerpc64le-linux-gnu | 6,146 | 2 | 811 | 1,082 | 1,115 | 3,135 |
| 2 | powerpc64-linux-gnu | 4,005 | 437 | 710 | 760 | 766 | 1,332 |
| 3 | x86_64-linux-gnu | 1,449 | 2 | 2 | 60 | 121 | 1,209 |
| 4 | x86_64-darwin | 684 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 683 |
| 5 | aarch64-linux-gnu | 526 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 496 |
| 6 | s390x-linux-gnu | 429 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 412 |
| 7 | arm-eabi | 260 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 260 |
| 8 | i686-solaris | 258 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 58 | 142 |
| 9 | sparc-solaris | 258 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 58 | 142 |
| 10 | pru-elf | 218 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 13 | 193 |
| 11 | x86_64-freebsd | 208 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 0 | 179 |
| 12 | i686-darwin | 146 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 145 |
| 13 | m68k-linux-gnu | 132 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 132 |
| 14 | arm-linux-gnueabihf | 116 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 98 |
| 15 | x86_64-solaris | 67 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 |
| 16 | sparcv9-solaris | 67 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 |
| 17 | avr-elf | 48 | 0 | 11 | 12 | 12 | 13 |
| 18 | riscv64-linux-gnu | 38 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 31 |
| 19 | hppa64-hpux | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 |
| 20 | hppa-linux-gnu | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 |
| 21 | i686-linux-gnu | 16 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 3 |
| 22 | arm-linux-gnueabi | 10 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 23 | powerpc-aix | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
| 24 | loongarch64-linux-gnu | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
| 25 | riscv32-elf | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 26 | ia64-linux-gnu | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 27 | mmix-mmixware | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 28 | mips64el-linux-gnuabi64 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 29 | vax-netbsdelf | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| | Total | 15,151 | 467 | 1,552 | 2,082 | 2,175 | 8,805 |

Thanks,
Dongsheng