GCC 16 considering changing default to C++20

Re:GCC 16 considering changing default to C++20 by cogman10 on Monday November 17, 2025 @10:18AM (#45954336)

> It's the type of dog fooding they should be doing! It's one reason why people care so much about self-hosted compilers, it's a demonstration of maturity of the language/compiler.

I could be misreading this, but unless they have a different understanding of what it means to dog fooding than I do then it seems like the proposal is to use C++20 features in the compiler bootstraping.

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Re:GCC 16 considering changing default to C++20 by ziotom78 on Monday November 17, 2025 @10:28AM (#45954406)

I believe they are really referring to the default mode used by GCC when no standard is explicitly stated.

The email mentions that the last time they changed it was 5 years ago in GCC 11, and the link <https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx17> indeed says

> C++17 mode is the default since GCC 11; it can be explicitly selected with the -std=c++17 command-line flag, or -std=gnu++17 to enable GNU extensions as well.

which does not imply a change in an obscure feature (bootstrapping) that would only affect a few users.

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