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

[Dave Johansen]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Boris Kolpackov <boris at codesynthesis.com>wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Dave Johansen <davejohansen at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > 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.
>
> That would definitely be great. If you were to do this you will have
> "priority assistance" from me ;-).
>
>
> > I believe that's a lot easier of a process if it can be built
> > from source.
>
> Yes, the cleanest way to do it would be to use GCC that ships with RHEL
> to build the ODB compiler 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?
>
> Actually, it is the plugin support. The ODB compiler underneath is
> implemented as a GCC plugin and uses the its frontend for C++ parsing.
> And plugin support first appeared in GCC 4.5.0.
>
>
> > 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?
>
> I believe it would be pretty hard. Essentially we would need to
> backport plugin support to GCC 4.4 and then convince RH to build
> an update with this support.
>
> I think, realistically, we can produce clean ODB packages for
> RHEL 7 (and for Fedora). Maybe starting with Fedora is a good
> idea.
>
> For earlier versions the best bet is to package a private version
> of GCC.
>
> Boris
>

I would definitely like to be able to get this setup, and would like to be
able to build it all on RHEL so it can be maintained as easily as possible
for an update and support perspective. I'm hoping to be able to use the
standard source RPM setup so it can all be easily built on a RHEL machine
without compiling things from a newer OS. But like you mentioned
previously, RHEL 5 and 6 only come with GCC 4.4, so what do you recommend
as the best way to do this? Have the source rpm also have GCC 4.5 that it
will build itself before building ODB and then packaging it with it like
your current binary builds do?

Thanks,
Dave