Linux: Dropping Support for GCC 2.95

Four months ago a debate on thelkml suggested that support for GCC 2.95 would be around for a long time [story], but a more recent thread suggests otherwise. 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton put together a small patch to remove support for 2.95, and discussion continued to explore which versions of GCC 3.x should be supported. Andrew explained:

"2.95.x is basically buggered at present. There's one scsi driver which doesn't compile due to weird __VA_ARGS__ tricks and the rather useful scsi/sd.c is currently getting an ICE. None of the new SAS code compiles, due to extensive use of anonymous unions. The V4L guys are very good at exploiting the gcc-2.95.x macro expansion bug (_why_ does each driver need to implement its own debug macros?) and various people keep on sneaking in anonymous unions.

"It's time to give up on it and just drink more coffee or play more tetris or something, I'm afraid."