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

[Dave Johansen]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Boris Kolpackov <boris at codesynthesis.com>wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Dave Johansen <davejohansen at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > You're right about building gcc as part of building the ODB compiler
> > being a pain, but I think it's the best option in the long run.
>
> I think the long-term solution should be to migrate to RHEL 7 where
> we can build and package everything using the stock GCC.
>

Yes, but we're just barely looking into moving to RHEL 6 and so it will be
a while until we'd consider moving to RHEL 7 and so I think that having a
long term solution that works on RHEL 5/6 is a good thing since both still
have quite a bit of life left in them.


> Another option would be to look if anyone packaged GCC 4.5 or later
> (with plugin support enabled) for RHEL 5/6. Then we can just use that
> package as a prerequisite instead of including a private copy of GCC.
>

RedHat is making GCC 4.7 available for RHEL 5/6, but it's not available as
part of the EPEL or any other standard source for CentOS:
http://www.redhat.com/summit/2012/pdf/2012-DevDay-How-To-Toolset-Newsome.pdf

Maybe it'd be worth trying to get that to be available in some sort of
standardize way and make it a dependency instead of bundling GCC with the
compiler.


> > It means that everything that is needed is contained in the source RPM
> > and can be viewed and changed in one location and then the binary RPM
> > regenerated as needed. It makes audits/inspections of the code/RPM
> > easier and means that everything can be done in one place instead of
> > grabbing pieces from several places and bundling them up.
>
> True, though you still need to get the source code for ODB. With
> my approach you will just be getting a binary package instead of
> the source one.
>

I just like the source way better because it means that everything is from
a known source. Some users get worried about distribution of binary blobs
and when it's build from source and they can build it themselves, then it
eases those concerns.


> > Is there somewhere that I can get access to how you built and
> > packaged gcc for your binary releases of the compiler?
>
> Those scripts are not in the repository (yet), so I copied them for
> your here:
>
> http://www.codesynthesis.com/~boris/tmp/odb/linux-gnu.tar.bz2
>
> Specifically, look into gcc-configure and build-gcc. Note also that
> we build it on an old Debian distro (Sarge).
>

Great! I'll check those out and see what I can get up and running.

Thanks for all of your help,
Dave