Compiling GCC on OS X

In this tutorial, I will show you how to compile from source and install the current stable version of GCC with Graphite loop optimizations on your OS X computer. The instructions from this tutorial were tested with Xcode 6.0.1 and Yosemite (OS X 10.10). Clang, the default compiler for OS X, supports only C, C++ and Objective-C. If you are interested in a modern Fortran compiler, for e.g., you will need gfortran that comes with GCC. Another reason to have the latest stable version of GCC on you Mac is that it provides you with an alternative C and C++ compiler. Testing your code with two different compilers is always a good idea. In order to compile GCC from sources you will need a working C++ compiler. In the remaining of this article I will assume that you have installed the Command Line Tools for Xcode. At the time of this writing Apple’s Command Line Tools maps the gcc and g++ to clang and clang++.

Let’s start by downloading the last stable version of GCC from the GNU website, so go to:http://gcc.gnu.org/mirrors.html and download gcc-4.9.2.tar.bz2. I’ve saved the archive in my Downloadsfolder. We will also need three other libraries for a successful build of gcc: mpc, mpfr and gmp. Use the above links and download the last versions for all of them: gmp-6.0.0a.tar.bz2, mpc-1.0.2.tar.gz and mpfr-3.1.2.tar.bz2, also save them in your Downloads folder. For enabling the Graphite loop optimizations you will need two extra libraries, go toftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/ and download isl-0.12.2.tar.bz2 and cloog-0.18.1.tar.gz.

Extract the above six archives in your Downloads folder and open a Terminal window.

We will start by compiling the gmp library:

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cd ~ cd Downloads cd gmp*

Create a new folder named build in which the compiler will save the compiled library:

1	mkdir build && cd build

And now the fun part … write in your Terminal:

1	../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --enable-cxx

If you see no error message we can actually compile the gmp library:

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make -j 4

In a few minutes you will have a compiled gmp library. If you see no error message … congratulations, we are ready to install the library in the /usr/gcc-4.9.2 folder (you will need the administrator password for this):

1	sudo make install

We will do the same steps for MPFR now:

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cd .. cd .. cd mpfr* mkdir build && cd build

Configuration phase:

1	../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-gmp=/usr/gcc-4.9.2

The second parameter will just inform the configure app that gmp is already installed in /usr/gcc-4.9.2.

After the configure phase is finished, we can make and install the library:

1 2	make -j 4 sudo make install

Now, we are going to build MPC:

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cd .. cd .. cd mpc* mkdir build && cd build ../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-gmp=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-mpfr=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 make -j 4 sudo make install

At this time you should have finished to build and install the necessary prerequisites for GCC.

Next step is to build the libraries for the Graphite loop optimizations:

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cd .. cd .. cd isl* mkdir build && cd build ../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-gmp-prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 make -j 4 sudo make install cd .. cd .. cd cloog* mkdir build && cd build ../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-gmp-prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-isl-prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 make -j 4 sudo make install

We are ready to compile GCC now. Be prepared that this could take more than one hour on some machines … Since I’m interested only in the C, C++ and Fortran compilers, this is the configure command I’ve used on my machine:

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cd .. cd .. cd gcc* mkdir build && cd build ../configure --prefix=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --enable-checking=release --with-gmp=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-mpfr=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-mpc=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran --with-isl=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --with-cloog=/usr/gcc-4.9.2 --program-suffix=-4.9.2

The above command instructs the configure app where we have installed gmp, mpfr, mpc, ppl and cloog; also it tells to add a prefix to all the resulting executable programs, so for example if you will invoke GCC 4.9.2 you will write gcc-4.9.2, the gcc command will invoke Apple’s version of clang.

If you are interested in building more compilers available in the GCC collection modify the –enable-languages configure option.

And now, the final touches:

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make -j 4

Grab a coffee, maybe a book, and wait … this should take approximately, depending on your computer configuration, an hour … or more … and about 2GB of your disk space for the build folder.

Install the compiled gcc in /usr/gcc-4.9.2:

1	sudo make install

Now, you can keep the new compiler completely isolated from your Apple’s gcc compiler and, when you need to use it, just modify your path by writing in Terminal:

1	export PATH=/usr/gcc-4.9.2/bin:$PATH

If you want to avoid writing the above command each time you open a Terminal, save the above command in the file .bash_profile from your Home folder.

You should be able to invoke any of the newly compiled compilers C, C++, Fortran …, invoking g++ is as simple as writing in your Terminal:

1	g++-4.9.2 test.cpp -o test

Remember to erase your build directories from Downloads if you want to recover some space.

Let’s check if g++-4.9.2 can compile some C++11 specifics. In your favorite text editor, copy and save this test program (I’ll assume you will save the file in your Home directory):

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//Program to test the new C++11 lambda syntax and initializer lists #include <iostream> #include <vector> using namespace std; int main() { // Test lambda cout << [](int m, int n) { return m + n;} (2,4) << endl; // Test initializer lists and range based for loop vector<int> V({1,2,3}); cout << "V =" << endl; for(auto e : V) { cout << e << endl; } return 0; }

Compiling and running the above lambda example:

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g++-4.9.2 -std=c++11 tst_lambda.cpp -o tst_lambda ./tst_lambda 6 V = 1 2 3

We could also compile a C++ code that uses the new thread header from C++11:

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//Create a C++11 thread from the main program #include <iostream> #include <thread> //This function will be called from a thread void call_from_thread() { std::cout << "Hello, World!" << std::endl; } int main() { //Launch a thread std::thread t1(call_from_thread); //Join the thread with the main thread t1.join(); return 0; }

GCC 4.9.2, finally, implements the C++11 regex header. Next, we present a simple C++11 code that uses regular expressions to check if the input read from stdin is a floating point number:

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//Uses a regex to check if the input is a floating point number #include <iostream> #include <regex> #include <string> using namespace std; int main() { string input; regex rr("((\\+|-)?[[:digit:]]+)(\\.(([[:digit:]]+)?))?((e|E)((\\+|-)?)[[:digit:]]+)?"); //As long as the input is correct ask for another number while(true) { cout<<"Give me a real number!"<<endl; cin>>input; if(!cin) break; //Exit when the user inputs q if(input=="q") break; if(regex_match(input,rr)) cout<<"float"<<endl; else { cout<<"Invalid input"<<endl; } } }

If you are a Fortran programmer, you can use some of the Fortran 2008 features like do concurrent with gfortran-4.9.2:

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integer,parameter::mm=100000 real::a(mm), b(mm) real::fact=0.5 ! initialize the arrays ! ... do concurrent (i = 1 : mm) a(i) = a(i) + b(i) enddo end

The above code can be compiled with (assuming you’ve named it tst_concurrent_do.f90):

1 2	gfortran-4.9.2 tst_concurrent_do.f90 -o tst_concurrent_do ./tst_concurrent_do

from https://solarianprogrammer.com/2013/06/11/compiling-gcc-mac-os-x/