Compiling GCC 5 on OS X | Hacker News Reader

Compiling GCC 5 on OS X

solarianprogrammer.com

53 pointsAlexeyBrin18 comments

Just as a PSA: GCC 5.1.0 is available in Homebrew as the gcc5 package.

Do you (or anyone) know why the gcc package isn't GCC 5.1 yet?I'm not sure why Homebrew hasn't updated the gcc package itself, and instead requires you to use the versions/gcc5 one.

Certain things are still being tested/rebuilt to work with the latest GCC.

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/36926

If you're going to put gmp etc in the same spot as gcc just let gcc download and configure the prereqs:

    tar xf gcc...
    cd gcc...
    contrib/download_prerequisites
    ./configure ...
    make
    make install

$ brew install gcc5

Done.

Would have been interesting to see if it can compile itself.

It does, during the build process. Twice.

Compiling GCC 5 on Gentoo Linux:

    echo "sys-devel/gcc:5.1 **" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
    emerge -n gcc:4.9
    emerge -1 gcc

From the article: >Clang, the default compiler for OS X, supports only C, C++ and >Objective-C. If you are interested in a modern Fortran >compiler,...

  Mmm, no we are not interested

BLAS and LAPACK?

C versions of those ship pre-built on OS X.

Are you sure that's not just a C interface to the Fortran library?

http://www.netlib.org/lapack/ : "LAPACK is written in Fortran 90 and provides routines for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, least-squares solutions of linear systems of equations, eigenvalue problems, and singular value problems."

http://www.netlib.org/lapack/lapacke.html : "The LAPACKE C Interface to LAPACK"

You might be right, at least for parts of LAPACK. I think Apple's libraries are based on ATLAS, where the BLAS part and some of LAPACK is written in C.

There is a reason why these things are still written in FORTRAN: they run much faster than C-based versions. Some people say that C++ with templates can get closer to FORTRAN, but even if that is true, creating libraries for non-C++ languages from C++ template-based code is very complicated.

Like it or not, there still exist many important and frequently used programs which are only written in fortran. People absolutely should be interested in maintaining a fortran compiler.

Yeah, there's little reason to write new code in Fortran, but there's definitely a need for current binaries of all those existing mature and well-designed Fortran libraries.

I work with reservoir modelling, and it continues to amaze me that everyone coming from non-CS fields seem to have programmed solely in Fortran. Besides, I believe the Intel Fortran compiler is extremely fast. I wouldn't say there's no reason to write new programs in Fortran.

I find it's much easier to write code that uses multidimensional arrays in Fortan than almost any other language.

Sure, i/o isn't as nice and don't try to do anything fancy with strings, but for numbers it's hard to beat.

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