OK I now have a 10.6.6 install available, along with 10.8.something and 10.11.1. The former two are in VMs so I can run them easily and in parallel.
lethosor has 10.7 and 10.9. So we just have about the full range of supported OSXs on which to test any new libstdc++s.
In terms of version of an updated GCC: my vote would go to 5.2. It should be just as compatible as 4.9 (once the flag is added to disable the new C++11 name mangling, which I've made a pull request for), and it will be better supported for longer. GCC 4.9 already requires a patch to compile DFHack with modern XCode, and although that patch should be available in Homebrew soon, who knows what future XCode and OSX versions might break. GCC 5.x will be supported by the Homebrew guys a lot longer than 4.9.
(To be precise: 5.x actually requires the same patch, but whereas the Homebrew team noticed and added the patch for 5.x already, they did not notice it on 4.9 and it only got fixed when we found the problem this week. It seems unlikely that 4.x will receive many or any further patches, so once again we'll be on our own if the next release of XCode or OSX breaks it. 5.x on the other hand can be presumed to be supported for a lot longer.)
So if we're going to do the switch at all, then I say go for the latest known-good version available today.
In the next day or two I will try:
- building both GCC 4.9 and 5.2 using the compiler flags lethosor mentioned
- building DFHack with GCC 4.9 and 5.2
- testing the resulting DFHack and libstdc++ combinations on both OSX 10.6 and 10.8. If they both work, then I think that's good evidence that we can upgrade, and I would say to 5.2 is best.
- I'll also think about the same for Linux - what might be the oldest Linux supported, and confirming a modern GCC libstdc++ runs fine on there (I would expect no problems on Linux)