I have an application that is deployed on a centos 6.7 plateform and built with the native C++ compiler of the distribution, that is gcc 4.4.7. Now for some reasons ( actually, upgrade to Qt 5.7 ), i need to use a modern compiler with C++11 features fully supported, let's say gcc 4.8.2 from devtoolset-2. Another possibility was to built a new version of gcc from the sources. According to https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/abi.html the 4.8.3 (but 4.8.2 is not mentionned ) version of gcc is backward compatible with the libstdc++.6.0.13 ( default c++ lib in centos 6.7 ).
I have recompiled the application with this new gcc 4.8.2 version and everything seems to run fine in the dev environment. The app use the default system c++, gcc and c libs.
However, when it comes to deployment on centos 6.7 ( after a fresh install for example ) i ask myself how safe it is to do so ? Instead on relying on ABI compatibility , would it be better to provide the latest C++ and C libraries that are compatible with the version of gcc that was used to build my app ?