
For most formulae, the bottles need a minimum libstdc++ rather than a minimum GCC version. This is particularly important when building on Ubuntu where the default compiler version is older than libstdc++. So, checking the host libstdc++ version is a more accurate way to determine whether brew GCC is needed at runtime. This can be improved in the future to check symbol versions (e.g. GLIBCXX, CXXABI, GLIBC) which can allow some bottles to be installed even with older glibc/libstdc++.
Library
This directory contains all the code run by the official brew
command in Homebrew
and all formulae (package descriptions) in taps (repositories containing formulae) in Taps
subdirectories.