[odb-users] gcc plugin support on RHEL/CentOS 5 and 6?

[Dave Johansen]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Boris Kolpackov <boris at codesynthesis.com>wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Dave Johansen <davejohansen at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Does anyone know if it's possible to enable or install plugin support on
> > RHEL/CentOS 5 and 6? I would like to build and install odb on
> RHEL/CentOS 5
> > and 6, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get plugin support
> > working with gcc.
>
> Just to clarify a few things, only the ODB compiler requires plugin
> support and can only be built with GCC 4.5.0 or later. On the other
> hand, the ODB runtimes (i.e., libodb, libodb-<db>), examples, etc.,
> can all be built with earlier versions of GCC.
>
> I've done some research I it doesn't seem there is packaged GCC 4.5.0
> or later for either RHEL/CentOS 5 or 6. They both seem to come with
> GCC 4.4.X.
>
> So your options are (from easier to more difficult):
>
> 1. Download the pre-built ODB compiler (the odb-X.Y.Z-<arch>-linux-gnu
>    package). It includes a private copy of GCC with plugin support so all
>    you have to do is download, unpack, and it is ready to go.
>
>    In this setup you would use the stock GCC that comes with RHEL/CentOS
>    to build the rest of the ODB (i.e., libodb, etc) as well as your
>    application.
>
> 2. Build and install GCC 4.5.0 or later from source yourself. There
>    are quite a few guides on the net that explain how to do this. To
>    enable plugins you would add the --enable-plugin configure option.
>
>    Once this is done you can then build the ODB compiler from source
>    using this new GCC version.
>
> Note also that once RHEL/CentOS 7 is out (presumably with GCC 4.5.0
> or later), building ODB from source will become much easier. All you
> will have to do is install the plugin support from the repository
> (yum install gcc-plugin-devel). That's how it works on Fedora.
>
> Boris
>

The platforms & compilers page says GCC 4.2-4.7, but I wasn't sure if that
was the compiler, the library, or both. I was afraid that that the compiler
might require a higher version of GCC than stated there, so maybe I'll give
option #1 a try and see if I can get it working.

However, I would like to get the standard packaging/rpm stuff setup and
maybe even contributed to the EPEL so it could be used easily by more than
just myself. I believe that's a lot easier of a process if it can be built
from source. But I'm assuming that the requirement for GCC 4.5 is because
of a feature that was introduced in that release (and I'm guessing it is
some enhanced C++0x support). Is that the case? And if so, how extensive is
the use of GCC 4.5 features? Basically, how hard would it be to get the odb
compiler to build on GCC 4.4?

Thanks,
Dave