MATLAB: Modern MATLAB ubuntu/linux compiler support

compilergccMATLABmatlab coderMATLAB Compilersimulink coder

For a long time we've been using MATLAB R2016a on ubuntu 16.04 at University of Technology Eindhoven happily for several robotics projects.
The time is now there to upgrade both ubuntu and MATLAB versions to modern ones, but here we struggle with MATLAB's linux compiler support.
For MATLAB R2019b, R2020a (and R2020b), the supported gcc compiler seems to be 6.3.x (https://www.mathworks.com/support/requirements/supported-compilers.html)
However, ubuntu 18.04 and 19.10 ship with gcc 7.4 by default and via apt only gcc 6.5 can be installed.
On ubuntu 20.04 (our preferred version for upgrading) gcc 9.3 is installed by default and no version lower than 7 is installable via apt.
(building gcc from source would not be preferred)
Why is MATLAB supporting solely such ancient gcc versions? And why is ubuntu still considered a supported OS for modern MATLAB versions while the default compilers shipped with them are not supported?
What would be the best suggestion for a modern MATLAB, ubuntu and gcc package?

Best Answer

gcc 9 should work fine. There is no abi breakage change between 6 and 9.
At least for MATLAB Coder, we don't enforce gcc version to match the one listed on compiler support page.
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