I'm a relatively new FreeBSD user, in fact I'm writing this on a Thinkpad running FreeBSD right now. The title is still super misleading, I had no clue that it was talking about the build infrastructure from the title alone - instead, I was expecting that my next version upgrade would remove GCC compatibility. Learning the FreeBSD philosophy doesn't change the fact that the title is inaccurate and unhelpful.

Yes, your next upgrade will remove GCC from the base system, not just from the "build infrastructure". However, you can still install the GCC port, as before.

With a tiny caveat: most folks actually won't feel this, because GCC hasn't been included in any x86 installed base system for quite a while now. Most exposure to it for many users would have been if they were cross-building archs that still required it, as the build infrastructure would bootstrap an appropriate GCC4.2 at that time.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying - I was expecting that this post would mean that GCC would stop working, or no longer be available, for me as a user. The point is that even for a FreeBSD user - albeit a new one - the title here is unclear on what "removed GCC" means.

But FreeBSD doesn’t control what software works on FreeBSD, that is up to the individual software maintainers. What you are describing would be “GCC has removed support for FreeBSD.”

Then you really need to read up handbook again. Removing things from base never meant what you think it meant.

You can't expect people to be experts in everything.

I didn’t expect people to be experts in everything, and my comment says the exact opposite: non-experts could learn a little bit about the subject.

I just learned something useful! There might be more crud in BSD, better avoid. The fact they only now remove gcc-4.2 as the base of their system has told me more than enough, thanks, but no thanks.