Thanks, that does let me compile those examples under 7.2. Good to know.
What happened was I wanted a quick Nios ref design with a bdf representation. I had another disk, 'CycloneIII_Starter_Kit-v7.1.0'. which already had the 'CIII_NiosII_Small' project with a bdf. When I tried it I ran into the link error 'undefined _exit', and I also found I could not re-gen the project.
I finally figured out that these problems were because the examples installed with all files read-only. The tools are not good at telling that a failure is due to file permissions...
Once I copied the example and changed file permissions, I was able to re-gen, re-synth, and compile the 'hello_world_small' app targeted to the new ptf. The sof is time limited since I am using the 7.1 web version.
New problem: I can download the time limited sof to the board, but I cannot run the app.
I get 'Error starting process. Exec error:Launching failed'.
I also see on the launch dialog '[Debugger]: The CPU is not supported by selected debugger.' I have level 1 debug on the nios in this design so this makes no sense.