On 7 April 2013 15:24, Dennis Clarke wrote: > >> On 04/07/2013 02:46 PM, Dennis Clarke wrote: >> > >> >> Required versions of gmp/mpfr/mpc clearly stated in the docs: >> >> http://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html >> >> I'm not sure how you could miss that. >> >> >> >> cloog/ppl/isl are not required (unless you want the optional Graphite >> >> loop optimisation support) >> >> >> >> Systemtap is not required. If you have it, it needs to be a fairly >> >> recent version. >> >> >> >> http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC gives a foolproof recipe. >> > >> > I take some exception to the language on that page and perhaps I can >> > edit it to be a bit more cross platform and in the spirit of open >> > source. >> >> GCC is free software. > > Yes, of course. Free as in beer. Love it. No! Free as in free speech, not free beer. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > However it would be nice, and I must find a way to find the right tone here > such that I am not perceived as picking an argument for the sake of > entertainment or some axe to grind, if the RTFM-averse crowd were > told that "hey, no promise anything is up to date or even works" unless > you build it yourself. No! For the majority of users, who are using a mainstream GNU/Linux distro, getting the package from the distro packager is more likely to work and is much easier than building it yourself. >> > There clearly seems to be a heavy leaning towards Linux distros here >> > where Debian is directly mentioned and the assumption is made that >> > pre-built ( by someone magic ) packages exist out in the world. >> >> Well, yes. GCC was originally, as its name suggests, the compiler for >> the GNU operating system, which these days mostly means GNU/Linux. >> These days GCC is used for all manner of other things as well, but >> it's not unreasonable to favour free software distributions on the >> wiki. > > I am not up to speed on the GPL or BSD license language but I would think > that Illumos or FreeBSD or OpenBSD would fall into the category of "free > distros" however, let's not get obscure. Ever seen Illumos? I sure haven't > an I should have. So yes, I think that being milk and cookie friendly to > the Debian/Ubuntu folks makes sense. I get it. Really I do. > >> > The libs that are really needed, gmp/mpfr/mpc do *need* to be built >> > from sources on Solaris. They may be available on the BSD's and may >> > be available for Debian and Red Hat Enterprise Linux but I run all >> > of these operating systems in fairly up to date revs. None of them >> > are up to date with regards to gmp/mpfr and mpc. Not one of them. >> >> In which case, all you have to do is go as far as the sceond >> paragraph, which says: >> >> * Alternatively, after extracting the GCC source archive, simply run >> the ./contrib/download_prerequisites script in the GCC source >> directory. That will download the support libraries and create >> symlinks, causing them to be built automatically as part of the GCC >> build process. > > Therein lay my reasons to bristle a bit. The bits one gets from the cute > download_prerequisites script are dusty at best. Thus : > > > MPFR=mpfr-2.4.2 > GMP=gmp-4.3.2 > MPC=mpc-0.8.1 > > Well my most recent bootstraps of GCC 4.8.0 were done with : > > . > . > . < snippet from the libmpc testsuite report > > GMP: include 5.1.1, lib 5.1.1 > MPFR: include 3.1.2, lib 3.1.2 > MPC: include 1.0.1, lib 1.0.1 > C compiler: /usr/local/gcc4/bin/gcc > GCC: yes > GCC version: 4.7.2 > PASS: tget_version > =================== > All 64 tests passed > =================== > > The versions provided by the "download_prerequisites" are years behind the > times and much has been done in those numerical software projects. > > So perhaps the script and the tarballs at ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/ > could be brought into this decade? Couldn't hurt. Irrelevant to that wiki page. As is clearly stated at http://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html "While any sufficiently new version of required tools usually work, library requirements are generally stricter. Newer versions may work in some cases, but it's safer to use the exact versions documented." The script gets versions that are known to work and have been well tested. If you want to try newer versions, feel free, but the wiki page is not about being adventurous or trying things out, it's for getting a working GCC with the least effort. I believe it meets that goal, please don't change it unless you improve its ability to meet that goal.
