[yocto] Switching between stable gcc versions

[Elvis Dowson]

Hi,
      In poky master, the current version of gcc is 4.7.2. If I have a situation, where I need to revert back to using gcc-4.5.1, how can I do this cleanly? 

Perhaps some of the issues that I'm facing with getting my root filesystem image booting on my Xilinx ML507 development board (Virtex 5 PowerPC 440 processor) might be related the new gcc-4.7.2 release.

At the moment, I've had to delete my entire build, switch to the bernard-5.0.2 tag, and then attempt to try and build a new rootfilesystem. Others have successfully built and got linux running on my target board, with bernard-5.0, about a year ago.

So, if it does indeed turn out that I need to use an older version of gcc, for my target, what should I do, to continue working with the poky master repo, but only use the older gcc-4.5.1 release?

Some options that I can think of are:

a. Reintroduce the older gcc-4.5.1 recipes in a local branch, but that would mean others would not be able to reproduce my work on their machines.

b. Use bernard-5.0.2 to build the toolchain, and set things up so that it uses that as an external toolchain.

I don't think both the options are elegant, so if someone could offer any suggestions it would be great. 

Best regards,

Elvis Dowson