runtime clang/clang++ with non-standard gcc install? - clang

Is there a way to get clang/clang++ to use a gcc/g++ installation in a non-standard (i.e. not /usr) place?
I'm trying to get AMD's AOCC 4.0 compiler to work. They provide a pre-compiled version that you just unpack. The problem is that it seems to assume gcc is in /usr/lib/gcc/... In my case I'm on CentOS 7 so that's gcc 4.8.5. I want to use newer gcc's install in /sw/opt (and managed with environment modules) but even if the gcc is in my path, clang only finds that 4.8.5 version in /usr. This is also a problem in that I have a cluster that has no default gcc installed (but many gcc versions installed in /cluster/sw) and I can't get clang to see them.
When I want LLVM I usually just build from scratch and specify GCC_INSTALL_PREFIX but that only seems to be useful at build time and since AMD only provides executables I'm out of luck.
Ideally I'd like to get clang/clang++ to point to another gcc (en mass: include, libs, etc...) or not be dependent on gcc at all.
AOCC seems to be based on 14.0.6 if that matters:
AMD clang version 14.0.6 (CLANG: AOCC_4.0.0-Build#434 2022_10_28) (based on LLVM Mirror.Version.14.0.6)
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /sw/opt/aocc-compiler-4.0.0/bin

After more poking around I've discovered that there is a clang option "--gcc-toolchain" that seems to address this. Some clang documentation also lists an option "--gcc-install-dir" but neither the 14.0.6 based version of AOCC nor the 16.0.0 based version of OneAPI (2023.0) seem to recognize it. I don't see it in the output of "clang --help" either so who knows.

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gcc appears to be misconfigured in macOS Big Sur

I've been trying to build GCC 10.2 on my Intel MBP. As I've always done, I'm building from source and installing on /usr/local. Trouble is no matter what, the build fails on STAGE2 of bootstrapping. A careful search on all logs (including dependencies) could not point to a single fault. The only thing that stood out was the clang setup from Xcode Command Line Tools. When I run 'gcc -v' on a clean system (empty /usr/local), it outputs:
Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple clang version 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.29)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin20.2.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
Trouble is that the target for --with-gxx-include-dir doesn't exist! There is no c++ subfolder, to begin with. Although there is one from the --prefix tree, instead of 4.2.1, there is just a v1 subfolder.
It would appear that there is something terribly wrong with Xcode Command Line Tools. But I can't be sure that this is the cause of my own troubles.
Please, don't answer this post pointing me to a package manager... there's a reason I abandoned those years ago. Also, it would be off-topic to the issue at hand.
I've finally managed to isolate the issue. GCC 10.2 depends on GMP, MPFR, MPC, and ISL libraries. I had them manually installed with the latest version available and fine tuned to my system. I didn't explore if it was a version conflict, or a fine tuning issue, but that broke the build. The solution was to let the script 'contrib/download_prerequisites' (within gcc tree) download the appropriate versions that were built along with GCC.
I also found out that the '--with-gxx-include-dir' target is a non-issue. It isn't supposed to point anywhere in my system. It is a reference to the system that built the "gcc" provided by Xcode Command Line Tools.

clang/clang++ not detecting standard header files like iostream.h and stdio.h

I ran clang++ -v testfile.cpp and found that many standard headers were missing from the directory C:\LLVM\lib\clang\3.9.0\include. I downloaded a pre-built binary of clang 3.9.0 for 32 bit windows from this link.
Can someone please help me sort out this mess and explain me why the standard libraries are missing in the pre-build version of clang? I've searched the web for hours to get the answer and solution to this problem but couldn't find one. Thanks in advance.
why the standard libraries are missing in the pre-build version of clang?
Your Windows binary download comprises only binary build tools
plus a handful of clang-specific headers because you are supposed
to use clang, on Windows, in lieu of another native compiler that provides your
standard library. Similarly if you install clang on Linux you'll build against
the GCC standard library by default.
Your internet search seemingly failed to lead you to Installing clang++ to compile and link on Windows, which
explains how to integrate clang with the mingw-w64 GCC standard library for 32- and/or 64-bit work
in the manner that clang for Windows expects and supports.

Is Clang as (or more) portable than gcc for C++?

Suppose I have a C++ project, and I compile it with gcc and with clang. You can assume that the gcc compiled version runs in another linux machine. Will this imply (in normal circumstances) that the clang version will also run on the other linux machine?
Clang binraries are as portable as gcc binaries are, as long as you are linking to the same libraries and you aren't passing flags like -march=native to the compiler.
Clang has one huge advantage over gcc, it can deal with alsmost all libstdc++ versions,
while gcc is bound to its bundled version and often can't parse any older versions.
So the following often happens in production environments:
Install an LTS distro (Ubuntu 12.04 for example)
Keep gcc, glibc and libstdc++ untouched
Install a recent clang version for C++11, etc
Build the release binaries with clang
So (in my specific example) those binaries will work on all
distros with libstdc++ >= 4.6 and glibc >= 2.15.
This may be an interesting read for you.
If the program is a simple Hello world, it should work on the other machine when compiled through Clang.
But when the program is a real program with a lot a lines and compilation units, and calls to many external libs everything is possible depending on the program itself and the compilation options :
hardware requirements (memory) being different (mainly depends on compilation options)
use of different (versions of) libraries between gcc and clang
UB giving expected results in one and not in the other
different usages for implementation defined rules
use of gcc extensions not accepted by clang
For all of the above except 2 first, it should run on other machines it it runs on one
linux programs depend on their build environment. If your glibc version or kernel is different there will be lots of possibilities that the executable will not be able to run. You could use the interpreter language of llvm though, it compiles into bytecode which can be interpreted on various operating systems.
The answer is, well, depends.
The first hard requirement is the same CPU architecture. 64 Bit is not enough of a qualifier. If you compile of x64 you won't have much success running it on 64-Bit ARM.
The next big one is libraries. If you use any libraries in the program, the target system needs to have those libraries. This includes the kernel headers. So if you compile for e.g. a current kernel version, using the most cutting-edge features, then you will have no joy running that program on a very old version of Linux.
The last one is hardware dependencies. If you create a program that e.g. requires 4 GB of RAM and then try to run it on a small embedded device with 256 MB RAM, that won't work either.
To fit better to your changed question: From my experience there shouldn't be much of a difference in portability between Clang and gcc. Also googling didn't turn up anything, so it should basically work. But better always test stuff like that before you publish some binary in production.

Compiling C Source for iOS

I have some existing source code that is written in C that I want to build and include in my iOS project. The entire source package is very large and is built using existing Makefiles and GCC. It is producing static libraries (.a files) that I would love to move over to my iOS project. However, the static libraries the Makefile produces is for x86 processors, which obviously won't work on iOS.
Is there a way I can switch GCC to build for ARMv7/ARM64 instead, without making changes to the existing source (in most cases)? I know there is the -march switch for GCC or you can download ARM specific GCC compilers, so I know the general concept of building for a different architecture than the build machine.
To build for ARM on Mac OS, will I have to download a different GCC compiler or is that capability built into the default GCC?
I'm sorry for the lack of understanding of basic concepts here; I'm primarily a Java and Objective-C developer, so building source for different architectures is a mostly foreign concept to me.
Whilst GCC supports a good many CPU architecture and platforms, it is usually built for a single one. To compile for ARM you generally need an ARM-cross-compiling GCC targeted appropriately.
The default system compiler for MacOSX and iOS for all architectures is clang and has been for some time (the last version of GCC apple shipped in dev tools is creaking and obsolete, and definitely won't support ARMv8).
The usual way of getting clang is to install Xcode (free from the App Store). There's a option in the installer (and in the UI of Xcode) to install the command-line tool package. This installs sym-links in /usr/bin to the compiler, and installs a bunch of other stuff you might expect such as make.
clang is (mostly) command-line compatible with gcc, and furthermore, you'll find that if you run gcc from the command-line on a Mac with dev-tools installed, you in fact get clang.
$ gcc --version
Configured with: -- prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.10.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 6.0 (clang-600.0.54) (based on LLVM 3.5svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0
Thread model: posix
clang comes with ARMv7, ARMv8, i686, x86_64 on MacOSX, and can be configured to compile for any of these from the command line (See documentation)
Given the above, there's a fair chance your code will compile with minimal changes to compiler-flags using the existing makefile. You might want to read the documentation for lipo - which allows you to produce multi-architecture binaries.

Building Clang, libstdc++4.6 to libstdc++4.7

I am trying to build Clang following this: http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html
At step 6 the command ../llvm/configure runs a series of checks and one tells me:
checking whether Clang will select a modern C++ standard library... no
configure: error:
We detected a missing feature in the standard C++ library that was known to be
missing in libstdc++4.6 and implemented in libstdc++4.7. There are numerous
C++11 problems with 4.6's library, and we don't support GCCs or libstdc++ older
than 4.7. You will need to update your system and ensure Clang uses the newer
standard library.
If this error is incorrect or you need to force things to work, you may pass
'--disable-compiler-version-checks' to configure to bypass this test.
I don't know how to resolve this and google searches for libstdc++4.7 did not produce anything useful to me or something I understand. How do I go about replacing / upgrading this? I am on a Mac (10.7.5)
I ran into the same problem. The easiest way to build Clang is to use libc++ instead of libstdc++. If you don't have libc++, you can obtain it by installing XCode 4.2 (or newer) or you can build it yourself by following the instructions here: http://libcxx.llvm.org/
After you have libc++ installed, you can use the --enable-libcpp=yes flag with the configure command.
Just this week, the LLVM & Clang project upped the minimal compiler version requirement to gcc 4.7, with its libstdc++. You'll need to install or build a newer gcc.
Here's a blog post I wrote earlier today about building gcc 4.8 on Ubuntu 12.04 and using that to compile trunk LLVM & Clang. Hope this helps!
i have the same error on mac 10.8.5 xcode 5.0
configure option --enable-libcpp resolve my problem
../llvm/configure --enable-cxx11 --enable-optimized --enable-libcpp
For me this happened because I had the old clang and clang++ that I'd previously built from source (the one I was attempting to build to replace) coming first in my PATH. These were too old. Removing those two files so that the build process would use the clang and clang++ that comes with XCode's Command Line Tools and then rebuilding worked fine.

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