Ubuntu 25.04 Planning To Use GCC 15 As Well As Exploring Greater LLVM Use
([Ubuntu] 4 Hours Ago
Ubuntu 25.04 Roadmap)
- Reference: 0001510623
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.04-Foundation-Roadmap
- Source link:
Canonical's Matthieu Clemenceau as the Engineering Director for the Ubuntu Foundations Team has provided a public roadmap around some of the plans for [1]Ubuntu 25.04 . This next Ubuntu Linux (non-LTS) release that is due out in April is set to enjoy more performance optimizations and other exciting bits.
Some of the details shared by Matthieu in today's Ubuntu 25.04 road-map update fro, the Foundations Team side included:
- As previously noted, [2]Ubuntu 25.04 will default to using the -O3 optimization level for its package builds . At the same time exploring packages that benefit or not from the "-O3" optimizations and addressing packages that run into issues from these more aggressive compiler optimizations.
- Canonical engineers will also be exploring areas where LLVM (and the Clang C/C++ compiler) benefit or not on the Ubuntu space. Canonical/Ubuntu isn't yet stating plans to move to LLVM/Clang by default or anything like that but are simply wanting to better evaluate where LLVM stands for the rest of the Ubuntu ecosystem beyond where it's currently used for the likes of Rust and Swift.
- Among the package updates expected in Ubuntu 25.04 include Glibc 2.41, systemd 257, and OpenSSL 3.4.
- Introducing Dracut as an alternative to initrds on Ubuntu 25.04. The hope is to use Dracut by default for initramfs generator by time of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
- Enhancements to the Ubuntu release upgrade experience.
- For Ubuntu 25.04 they are planning to ship the GCC 15 compiler. This is actually quite surprising with GCC 15 not due for release until next March~April. For many years now Ubuntu has held-off on moving to the new annual GCC feature releases until the xx.10 release cycle... But now with Ubuntu 25.04 they are going to seemingly aggressively pursue using GCC 15. This is nice to see for shipping newer GCC features faster than waiting six months and akin to how Fedora Linux has tended to be among the early distributions with new GCC versions. We'll see how well this works out and caught me by surprise with today's roadmap update rather than sticking to GCC 14 as introduced in Ubuntu 24.10.
- On the contrary, Ubuntu 25.04 is reportedly planning to ship LLVM 19 as what's already been out as stable with LLVM 19.1... LLVM 20 should be out in March ahead of Ubuntu 25.04 and roughly the same time as GCC 15, so it's a bit surprising they want to stick to LLVM 19 rather than LLVM 20.
- More Snaps of compiler toolchains are planned such as enhancing the Microsoft .NET experience.
- More RISC-V testing and better integration planned.
More details on these Ubuntu Foundations road-map plans for Ubuntu 25.04 via [3]Ubuntu Discourse .
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Ubuntu+25.04
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.04-Plucky-Puffin
[3] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-foundations-25-04-plucky-puffin-roadmap/50695
Some of the details shared by Matthieu in today's Ubuntu 25.04 road-map update fro, the Foundations Team side included:
- As previously noted, [2]Ubuntu 25.04 will default to using the -O3 optimization level for its package builds . At the same time exploring packages that benefit or not from the "-O3" optimizations and addressing packages that run into issues from these more aggressive compiler optimizations.
- Canonical engineers will also be exploring areas where LLVM (and the Clang C/C++ compiler) benefit or not on the Ubuntu space. Canonical/Ubuntu isn't yet stating plans to move to LLVM/Clang by default or anything like that but are simply wanting to better evaluate where LLVM stands for the rest of the Ubuntu ecosystem beyond where it's currently used for the likes of Rust and Swift.
- Among the package updates expected in Ubuntu 25.04 include Glibc 2.41, systemd 257, and OpenSSL 3.4.
- Introducing Dracut as an alternative to initrds on Ubuntu 25.04. The hope is to use Dracut by default for initramfs generator by time of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
- Enhancements to the Ubuntu release upgrade experience.
- For Ubuntu 25.04 they are planning to ship the GCC 15 compiler. This is actually quite surprising with GCC 15 not due for release until next March~April. For many years now Ubuntu has held-off on moving to the new annual GCC feature releases until the xx.10 release cycle... But now with Ubuntu 25.04 they are going to seemingly aggressively pursue using GCC 15. This is nice to see for shipping newer GCC features faster than waiting six months and akin to how Fedora Linux has tended to be among the early distributions with new GCC versions. We'll see how well this works out and caught me by surprise with today's roadmap update rather than sticking to GCC 14 as introduced in Ubuntu 24.10.
- On the contrary, Ubuntu 25.04 is reportedly planning to ship LLVM 19 as what's already been out as stable with LLVM 19.1... LLVM 20 should be out in March ahead of Ubuntu 25.04 and roughly the same time as GCC 15, so it's a bit surprising they want to stick to LLVM 19 rather than LLVM 20.
- More Snaps of compiler toolchains are planned such as enhancing the Microsoft .NET experience.
- More RISC-V testing and better integration planned.
More details on these Ubuntu Foundations road-map plans for Ubuntu 25.04 via [3]Ubuntu Discourse .
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Ubuntu+25.04
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.04-Plucky-Puffin
[3] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-foundations-25-04-plucky-puffin-roadmap/50695
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