What’s New in GCC 15? COBOL Frontend, C23 Default, and RISC‑V Boosts

GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) version 15 is progressing on schedule and will introduce a new frontend for COBOL along with major improvements for C and C++ development.

The latest status report offers little detail, stating that only regression and documentation fixes are open and that only 17 priority‑1 bugs remain.

GCC release manager Richard Biener expects GCC 15 to be released at the end of April or early May, contingent on fixing all regressions carried over from GCC 14; the project is currently in the regression‑fix stage (stage 4).

With GCC 15, the C compiler will default to the C23 language standard instead of C17, and the C++ compiler and standard library will begin receiving C++23 and C++26 features. Biener notes that C++20 modules are becoming available as compiler and tool improvements continue.

"GCC 15 looks like a very good release, especially for C++ development," Biener said.

RISC‑V architecture support continues to advance rapidly, particularly in vectorization and architectural extensions.

GCC 15 also adds a native COBOL frontend. Biener explains that COBOL presents unique challenges for compiler developers, and many legacy systems still rely on it, making a free compiler option valuable.

The proposed Algol‑68 frontend was not approved by the steering committee.

Biener added, "Compared with COBOL, Algol‑68 has little practical or commercial significance, but I hope to add it in the future; it is likely to appear with GCC 16."

Last week a major new feature— the COBOL frontend—was merged after three large patches that also added the libcobol standard library and accompanying documentation.

The new compiler, called gCobol, is a true native compiler: it takes COBOL source code and emits binary executables directly.

It should not be confused with GNUCobol (formerly OpenCOBOL), a 25‑year‑old project that translates COBOL to C and then relies on GCC or Microsoft Visual Studio C for compilation.

Beyond the compilation method, the two projects target different versions of the official COBOL standards. GNUCobol aligns with COBOL 2014 (over 99 % compatibility), while gCobol targets the newer COBOL 2023 standard, which is roughly one‑third longer.

When GCC 15 is released, COBOL will join the list of supported languages alongside C, C++, and Objective‑C; languages such as Ada 95, Fortran 77, and Pascal will continue to be distributed separately.

Algol‑68 will not be added to the compiler list at this time. Development continues on an independent branch hosted on Sourceware, with a dedicated mailing list for the frontend.

While COBOL remains widely used despite many companies wishing to move away from it, Algol‑60—though historically influential—no longer sees active use.