use newer GCC without building it from source

[YaronCT]

Head_on_a_Stick: you've got a point there.. well, if any of the forum admins is willing to move this thread to the appropriate developers' forum, that would be nice.

[GarryRicketson]

Postby YaronCT » 2016-02-09 09:45
Head_on_a_Stick: you've got a point there.. well, if any of the forum admins is willing to move this thread to the appropriate developers' forum, that would be nice.

---------- edited--OP posted while I was writing--------------
There isn't really any " appropriate developers' forum" as far as I know, just the mailing lists.
------------------- end edit--------------------
There was a discussion on that quite a while back, the responses were mixed, about having PPAs for Debian, but any way, as H_O_A_S points out,..

There are no Debian developers who visit this forum (AFAIK), hence the "Debian User Forums"

There might be a few Debian developers, that do look at some of the posts, a long time ago , one posted about the Debian LTS project, but any way, the forum is pretty much just users, and we have no say in what the "Debian Developers" offer , or have available, there are mailing lists they/we do use, ( I am not a developer, but do subscribe to a couple of the mailing lists) so I say "we" , some other forum members do use the mailing lists as well,..if you take the time to browse the Debian.org site, and look for the appropriate mailing list, they do listen and even respond to suggestions, and questions.
Seems like the topic is drifting into another topic.

[YaronCT]

GarryRicketson: thanx, I'll look into the mailing lists.

[YaronCT]

thanatos_incarnate: the idea to use "chroot" did come across my mind. Still I feel like having a package especially made for my specific Debian version would be a better solution.

GarryRicketson: Jee, how many mailing lists Debian has... I've never realized Debian is such an empire

[yeti]

You've seen https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gcc-6?

[YaronCT]

yeti: and that helps me how exactly?.. I'm interested in a package intended for Debian stable, certainly not from the experimantal repository. And btw GCC 6 has not been released yet at all, so I doubt even I would wanna use such an unstable version.

[yeti]

Ok... maybe the 6 was a typo... https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gcc-5 has hits too...
...but I already guess this is not what you want...

[tomazzi]

GarryRicketson, stevepusser : I wasn't refering to using this Ubuntu repository in Debian, but to using it in Ubuntu. As u can see, there's a GCC 5.3 package there that was built especially for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, so I don't see why installing it in this specific Ubuntu version should cause any problems. Of course, I take into account that an unofficial repository is less tested, but essentialy I think it should work without breaking the system.

So. what I'm saying is, I still don't see a reason why there shouldn't be a repository with newer GCC-s for Debian, and the fact that Ubuntu has such a repository strengthens my belief that it is indeed possible.

<Yes, I've also read Your previous posts>

For me, it looks like You don't know about what You're talking about (but maybe I'm wrong)
I would like to see Your answer to the following questions:

1. What functionalities in the gcc 5.x are so absolutely needed for Your project(s) ?
2. What do You think about libgomp, libgcc, libquadmath, etc (there are more) ? - as those libs are strictly compiler-version-dependant, and are shared for compatible compilers and for already compiled programs.

Regards.

[YaronCT]

tomazzi:

1. In recent years the C++ standard introduces many new features quite frequently. The C++ 11/14/17 support improves between compiler versions, and that's important for me. For example, GCC 4.9 doesn't have "std::codecvt_utf8".

2. If the version of e.g. libgomp in Debian stable happens not to be compatible with e.g. GCC 5.3 (and perhaps it is, I haven't checked), then u can always provide another version of libgomp with a different name that won't conflict with the default libgomp. Same for e.g. libgcc. Of course, I understand that the programs compiled with the alternate compiler will have to use something like rpath or "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" or "-static-libgcc" to use the alternate libgcc.

[YaronCT]

tomazzi:

In addition, I've downloaded GCC 5.3.0 and looked at its prerequisites . It says it requires GMP >= 4.3.2, MPFR >= 2.4.2, MPC >= 0.8.1 and optionally ISL = 0.14 or 0.12.2. It seems like Debian stable satisfies all those requirements. I'm not saying this proves GCC 5.3 would work perfectly with the Debian stable libraries, but at least according to GCC's documentation it should work fine..

[stevepusser]

Maybe you should contact the maintainer of the Ubuntu PPA and seek their advice on how difficult it was to create those backports, and what the build-depends actually turned out to be. No one here has done the work that the PPA maintainer has actually done, and probably nobody's willing to backport gcc-5 for you, so you may have to actually sit down and backport it yourself.

[YaronCT]

stevepusser: I thought the whole purpose of open source was to make other ppl do things for u, isn't it?

[tomazzi]

1. In recent years the C++ standard introduces many new features quite frequently. The C++ 11/14/17 support improves between compiler versions, and that's important for me. For example, GCC 4.9 doesn't have "std::codecvt_utf8".

2. If the version of e.g. libgomp in Debian stable happens not to be compatible with e.g. GCC 5.3 (and perhaps it is, I haven't checked), then u can always provide another version of libgomp with a different name that won't conflict with the default libgomp. Same for e.g. libgcc. Of course, I understand that the programs compiled with the alternate compiler will have to use something like rpath or "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" or "-static-libgcc" to use the alternate libgcc.

1. IMO that's the reason which eliminates C++11 from a set of production-class languages - unstable specification means unpredictable code produced by compilers which are using unstable specification....

2. Yes, You're right regarding the version requirements, but since the compiler is unstable (that is, it is proven that it can mess up the resulting binary code) - it's not sufficient to just check proclaimed compatibility.

Regards.