You have the implicit assumption that I'm working on an individual project. Imagine a large company which settles on an OS for some product that goes into the field for 10 or 20 years. That's the OS you're stuck with. And yes, that's painful in itself.
Now, I _can_, with some effort, pull/build a development toolchain. But it would be much nicer if I could have access to this utility on machines with older toolchains, that's all.
You can install the binary on your device and don't need to compile from source for using the application.
It seems unfair to both developers and other users of the project to expect it to be compatible with older toolchains given the benefits of the newer builds.
This. In the github readme it says static binaries are supplied. Thinking of linux and linux tooling as just something distros supply limit the imagination. Pull down the correct static and you're done. If you still want to compile it, it's easy.
From linux from scratch to muslcc to buildroot to yocto you can get nice new compilers and run them in docker or in a simple chroot. Requiring new compiler versions is a good thing and any disto related impediments are a distraction from just getting simple toolchain tooling going.
Now, I _can_, with some effort, pull/build a development toolchain. But it would be much nicer if I could have access to this utility on machines with older toolchains, that's all.