1326304 - bootstrap command should check for correct version of gcc

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: Mach Core, enhancement)

Description

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

Seeing:
> Your system should be ready to build Firefox for Desktop!

And then:
> $ ./mach build
> ...
> ERROR: Only GCC 4.9 or newer is supported

seems a little weird. Clearly my system was not ready to build Firefox.

Comment 1

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

We don't currently check compiler versions at all in the bootstrap code. We probably should. I think it'd look something like the ensure_{python,rust}_modern code we call here:
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/13603af3862d9583ed2feefb06e0988c2d7fed8c/python/mozboot/mozboot/bootstrap.py#231

Those are implemented here:
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/13603af3862d9583ed2feefb06e0988c2d7fed8c/python/mozboot/mozboot/base.py#478

It'd have to be a little more complicated--for Windows we could probably skip the check for now (although in the future it'd be nice to verify that we have a working MSVC install). Otherwise we'd want to check that we have one of clang or GCC with a new enough version. We'd have to add distro-specific bits to install a newer compiler for where it doesn't come by default. On Ubuntu 14.04 I had to configure the toolchain test PPA, for example:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ToolChain#PPA_packages