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+
+ GCC Frequently Asked Questions
+
+ The latest version of this document is always available at
+ [1]http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html.
+
+ This FAQ tries to answer specific questions concerning GCC. For general
+ information regarding C, C++, resp. Fortran please check the [2]comp.lang.c
+ FAQ, [3]comp.std.c++ FAQ, and the [4]Fortran Information page.
+
+ Other GCC-related FAQs: [5]libstdc++-v3, and [6]GCJ.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+ Questions
+
+ 1. [7]General information
+ 1. [8]What is an open development model?
+ 2. [9]How do I get a bug fixed or a feature added?
+ 3. [10]Does GCC work on my platform?
+ 2. [11]Installation
+ 1. [12]How to install multiple versions of GCC
+ 2. [13]Dynamic linker is unable to find GCC libraries
+ 3. [14]libstdc++/libio tests fail badly with --enable-shared
+ 4. [15]GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld
+ 5. [16]cpp: Usage:... Error
+ 6. [17]Optimizing the compiler itself
+ 7. [18]Why does libiconv get linked into jc1 on Solaris?
+ 3. [19]Testsuite problems
+ 1. [20]How do I pass flags like -fnew-abi to the testsuite?
+ 2. [21]How can I run the test suite with multiple options?
+ 4. [22]Miscellaneous
+ 1. [23]Friend Templates
+ 2. [24]dynamic_cast, throw, typeid don't work with shared libraries
+ 3. [25]Why do I need autoconf, bison, xgettext, automake, etc?
+ 4. [26]Why can't I build a shared library?
+ 5. [27]When building C++, the linker says my constructors, destructors
+ or virtual tables are undefined, but I defined them
+ 6. [28]Will GCC someday include an incremental linker?
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+ General information
+
+What is an open development model?
+
+ We are using a bazaar style [29][1] approach to GCC development: we make
+ snapshots publicly available to anyone who wants to try them; we welcome
+ anyone to join the development mailing list. All of the discussions on the
+ development mailing list are available via the web. We're going to be making
+ releases with a much higher frequency than they have been made in the past.
+
+ In addition to weekly snapshots of the GCC development sources, we have the
+ sources readable from an SVN server by anyone. Furthermore we are using SVN
+ to allow maintainers write access to the sources.
+
+ There have been many potential GCC developers who were not able to
+ participate in GCC development in the past. We want these people to help in
+ any way they can; we ultimately want GCC to be the best compiler in the
+ world.
+
+ A compiler is a complicated piece of software, there will still be strong
+ central maintainers who will reject patches, who will demand documentation
+ of implementations, and who will keep the level of quality as high as it is
+ today. Code that could use wider testing may be integrated--code that is
+ simply ill-conceived won't be.
+
+ GCC is not the first piece of software to use this open development process;
+ FreeBSD, the Emacs lisp repository, and the Linux kernel are a few examples
+ of the bazaar style of development.
+
+ With GCC, we are adding new features and optimizations at a rate that has
+ not been done since the creation of gcc2; these additions inevitably have a
+ temporarily destabilizing effect. With the help of developers working
+ together with this bazaar style development, the resulting stability and
+ quality levels will be better than we've had before.
+
+ [1] We've been discussing different development models a lot over the past
+ few months. The paper which started all of this introduced two terms: A
+ cathedral development model versus a bazaar development model. The paper
+ is written by Eric S. Raymond, it is called ``The Cathedral and the
+ Bazaar''. The paper is a useful starting point for discussions.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+How do I get a bug fixed or a feature added?
+
+ There are lots of ways to get something fixed. The list below may be
+ incomplete, but it covers many of the common cases. These are listed roughly
+ in order of decreasing difficulty for the average GCC user, meaning someone
+ who is not skilled in the internals of GCC, and where difficulty is measured
+ in terms of the time required to fix the bug. No alternative is better than
+ any other; each has its benefits and disadvantages.
+ * Fix it yourself. This alternative will probably bring results, if you
+ work hard enough, but will probably take a lot of time, and, depending
+ on the quality of your work and the perceived benefits of your changes,
+ your code may or may not ever make it into an official release of GCC.
+ * [30]Report the problem to the GCC bug tracking system and hope that
+ someone will be kind enough to fix it for you. While this is certainly
+ possible, and often happens, there is no guarantee that it will. You
+ should not expect the same response from this method that you would see
+ from a commercial support organization since the people who read GCC bug
+ reports, if they choose to help you, will be volunteering their time.
+ * Hire someone to fix it for you. There are various companies and
+ individuals providing support for GCC. This alternative costs money, but
+ is relatively likely to get results.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Does GCC work on my platform?
+
+ The host/target specific installation notes for GCC include information
+ about known problems with installing or using GCC on particular platforms.
+ These are included in the sources for a release in INSTALL/specific.html,
+ and the [31]latest version is always available at the GCC web site. Reports
+ of [32]successful builds for several versions of GCC are also available at
+ the web site.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+ Installation
+
+How to install multiple versions of GCC
+
+ It may be desirable to install multiple versions of the compiler on the same
+ system. This can be done by using different prefix paths at configure time
+ and a few symlinks.
+
+ Basically, configure the two compilers with different --prefix options, then
+ build and install each compiler. Assume you want "gcc" to be the latest
+ compiler and available in /usr/local/bin; also assume that you want "gcc2"
+ to be the older gcc2 compiler and also available in /usr/local/bin.
+
+ The easiest way to do this is to configure the new GCC with
+ --prefix=/usr/local/gcc and the older gcc2 with --prefix=/usr/local/gcc2.
+ Build and install both compilers. Then make a symlink from
+ /usr/local/bin/gcc to /usr/local/gcc/bin/gcc and from /usr/local/bin/gcc2 to
+ /usr/local/gcc2/bin/gcc. Create similar links for the "g++", "c++" and "g77"
+ compiler drivers.
+
+ An alternative to using symlinks is to configure with a
+ --program-transform-name option. This option specifies a sed command to
+ process installed program names with. Using it you can, for instance, have
+ all the new GCC programs installed as "new-gcc" and the like. You will still
+ have to specify different --prefix options for new GCC and old GCC, because
+ it is only the executable program names that are transformed. The difference
+ is that you (as administrator) do not have to set up symlinks, but must
+ specify additional directories in your (as a user) PATH. A complication with
+ --program-transform-name is that the sed command invariably contains
+ characters significant to the shell, and these have to be escaped correctly,
+ also it is not possible to use "^" or "$" in the command. Here is the option
+ to prefix "new-" to the new GCC installed programs:
+
+ --program-transform-name='s,\\\\(.*\\\\),new-\\\\1,'
+
+ With the above --prefix option, that will install the new GCC programs into
+ /usr/local/gcc/bin with names prefixed by "new-". You can use
+ --program-transform-name if you have multiple versions of GCC, and wish to
+ be sure about which version you are invoking.
+
+ If you use --prefix, GCC may have difficulty locating a GNU assembler or
+ linker on your system, [33]GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld explains how to
+ deal with this.
+
+ Another option that may be easier is to use the --program-prefix= or
+ --program-suffix= options to configure. So if you're installing GCC 2.95.2
+ and don't want to disturb the current version of GCC in /usr/local/bin/, you
+ could do
+
+ configure --program-suffix=-2.95.2 <other configure options>
+
+ This should result in GCC being installed as /usr/local/bin/gcc-2.95.2
+ instead of /usr/local/bin/gcc.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Dynamic linker is unable to find GCC libraries
+
+ This problem manifests itself by programs not finding shared libraries they
+ depend on when the programs are started. Note this problem often manifests
+ itself with failures in the libio/libstdc++ tests after configuring with
+ --enable-shared and building GCC.
+
+ GCC does not specify a runpath so that the dynamic linker can find dynamic
+ libraries at runtime.
+
+ The short explanation is that if you always pass a -R option to the linker,
+ then your programs become dependent on directories which may be NFS mounted,
+ and programs may hang unnecessarily when an NFS server goes down.
+
+ The problem is not programs that do require the directories; those programs
+ are going to hang no matter what you do. The problem is programs that do not
+ require the directories.
+
+ SunOS effectively always passed a -R option for every -L option; this was a
+ bad idea, and so it was removed for Solaris. We should not recreate it.
+
+ However, if you feel you really need such an option to be passed
+ automatically to the linker, you may add it to the GCC specs file. This file
+ can be found in the same directory that contains cc1 (run gcc
+ -print-prog-name=cc1 to find it). You may add linker flags such as -R or
+ -rpath, depending on platform and linker, to the *link or *lib specs.
+
+ Another alternative is to install a wrapper script around gcc, g++ or ld
+ that adds the appropriate directory to the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH
+ or equivalent (again, it's platform-dependent).
+
+ Yet another option, that works on a few platforms, is to hard-code the full
+ pathname of the library into its soname. This can only be accomplished by
+ modifying the appropriate .ml file within libstdc++/config (and also
+ libg++/config, if you are building libg++), so that $(libdir)/ appears just
+ before the library name in -soname or -h options.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld
+
+ GCC searches the PATH for an assembler and a loader, but it only does so
+ after searching a directory list hard-coded in the GCC executables. Since,
+ on most platforms, the hard-coded list includes directories in which the
+ system assembler and loader can be found, you may have to take one of the
+ following actions to arrange that GCC uses the GNU versions of those
+ programs.
+
+ To ensure that GCC finds the GNU assembler (the GNU loader), which are
+ required by [34]some configurations, you should configure these with the
+ same --prefix option as you used for GCC. Then build & install GNU as (GNU
+ ld) and proceed with building GCC.
+
+ Another alternative is to create links to GNU as and ld in any of the
+ directories printed by the command `gcc -print-search-dirs | grep
+ '^programs:''. The link to `ld' should be named `real-ld' if `ld' already
+ exists. If such links do not exist while you're compiling GCC, you may have
+ to create them in the build directories too, within the gcc directory and in
+ all the gcc/stage* subdirectories.
+
+ GCC 2.95 allows you to specify the full pathname of the assembler and the
+ linker to use. The configure flags are `--with-as=/path/to/as' and
+ `--with-ld=/path/to/ld'. GCC will try to use these pathnames before looking
+ for `as' or `(real-)ld' in the standard search dirs. If, at configure-time,
+ the specified programs are found to be GNU utilities, `--with-gnu-as' and
+ `--with-gnu-ld' need not be used; these flags will be auto-detected. One
+ drawback of this option is that it won't allow you to override the search
+ path for assembler and linker with command-line options -B/path/ if the
+ specified filenames exist.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+cpp: Usage:... Error
+
+ If you get an error like this when building GCC (particularly when building
+ __mulsi3), then you likely have a problem with your environment variables.
+ cpp: Usage: /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-unknown-linux-gnulibc1/2.7.2.3/cpp
+ [switches] input output
+
+ First look for an explicit '.' in either LIBRARY_PATH or GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
+ from your environment. If you do not find an explicit '.', look for an empty
+ pathname in those variables. Note that ':' at either the start or end of
+ these variables is an implicit '.' and will cause problems.
+
+ Also note '::' in these paths will also cause similar problems.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Optimizing the compiler itself
+
+ If you want to test a particular optimization option, it's useful to try
+ bootstrapping the compiler with that option turned on. For example, to test
+ the -fssa option, you could bootstrap like this:
+make BOOT_CFLAGS="-O2 -fssa" bootstrap
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Why does libiconv get linked into jc1 on Solaris?
+
+ The Java front end requires iconv. If the compiler used to bootstrap GCC
+ finds libiconv (because the GNU version of libiconv has been installed in
+ the same prefix as the bootstrap compiler), but the newly built GCC does not
+ find the library (because it will be installed with a different prefix),
+ then a link-time error will occur when building jc1. This problem does not
+ show up so often on platforms that have libiconv in a default location (like
+ /usr/lib) because then both compilers can find a library named libiconv,
+ even though it is a different library.
+
+ Using --disable-nls at configure-time does not prevent this problem because
+ jc1 uses iconv even in that case. Solutions include temporarily removing the
+ GNU libiconv, copying it to a default location such as /usr/lib/, and using
+ --enable-languages at configure-time to disable Java.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+ Testsuite problems
+
+How do I pass flags like -fnew-abi to the testsuite?
+
+ If you invoke runtest directly, you can use the --tool_opts option, e.g:
+ runtest --tool_opts "-fnew-abi -fno-honor-std" <other options>
+
+ Or, if you use make check you can use the make variable RUNTESTFLAGS, e.g:
+ make RUNTESTFLAGS="--tool_opts '-fnew-abi -fno-honor-std'" check-g++
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+How can I run the test suite with multiple options?
+
+ If you invoke runtest directly, you can use the --target_board option, e.g:
+ runtest --target_board "unix{-fPIC,-fpic,}" <other options>
+
+ Or, if you use make check you can use the make variable RUNTESTFLAGS, e.g:
+ make RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board 'unix{-fPIC,-fpic,}'" check-gcc
+
+ Either of these examples will run the tests three times. Once with -fPIC,
+ once with -fpic, and once with no additional flags.
+
+ This technique is particularly useful on multilibbed targets.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+ Miscellaneous
+
+Friend Templates
+
+ In order to make a specialization of a template function a friend of a
+ (possibly template) class, you must explicitly state that the friend
+ function is a template, by appending angle brackets to its name, and this
+ template function must have been declared already. Here's an example:
+template <typename T> class foo {
+ friend void bar(foo<T>);
+}
+
+ The above declaration declares a non-template function named bar, so it must
+ be explicitly defined for each specialization of foo. A template definition
+ of bar won't do, because it is unrelated with the non-template declaration
+ above. So you'd have to end up writing:
+void bar(foo<int>) { /* ... */ }
+void bar(foo<void>) { /* ... */ }
+
+ If you meant bar to be a template function, you should have forward-declared
+ it as follows. Note that, since the template function declaration refers to
+ the template class, the template class must be forward-declared too:
+template <typename T>
+class foo;
+
+template <typename T>
+void bar(foo<T>);
+
+template <typename T>
+class foo {
+ friend void bar<>(foo<T>);
+};
+
+template <typename T>
+void bar(foo<T>) { /* ... */ }
+
+ In this case, the template argument list could be left empty, because it can
+ be implicitly deduced from the function arguments, but the angle brackets
+ must be present, otherwise the declaration will be taken as a non-template
+ function. Furthermore, in some cases, you may have to explicitly specify the
+ template arguments, to remove ambiguity.
+
+ An error in the last public comment draft of the ANSI/ISO C++ Standard and
+ the fact that previous releases of GCC would accept such friend declarations
+ as template declarations has led people to believe that the forward
+ declaration was not necessary, but, according to the final version of the
+ Standard, it is.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+dynamic_cast, throw, typeid don't work with shared libraries
+
+ The new C++ ABI in the GCC 3.0 series uses address comparisons, rather than
+ string compares, to determine type equality. This leads to better
+ performance. Like other objects that have to be present in the final
+ executable, these std::type_info objects have what is called vague linkage
+ because they are not tightly bound to any one particular translation unit
+ (object file). The compiler has to emit them in any translation unit that
+ requires their presence, and then rely on the linking and loading process to
+ make sure that only one of them is active in the final executable. With
+ static linking all of these symbols are resolved at link time, but with
+ dynamic linking, further resolution occurs at load time. You have to ensure
+ that objects within a shared library are resolved against objects in the
+ executable and other shared libraries.
+ * For a program which is linked against a shared library, no additional
+ precautions are needed.
+ * You cannot create a shared library with the "-Bsymbolic" option, as that
+ prevents the resolution described above.
+ * If you use dlopen to explicitly load code from a shared library, you
+ must do several things. First, export global symbols from the executable
+ by linking it with the "-E" flag (you will have to specify this as
+ "-Wl,-E" if you are invoking the linker in the usual manner from the
+ compiler driver, g++). You must also make the external symbols in the
+ loaded library available for subsequent libraries by providing the
+ RTLD_GLOBAL flag to dlopen. The symbol resolution can be immediate or
+ lazy.
+
+ Template instantiations are another, user visible, case of objects with
+ vague linkage, which needs similar resolution. If you do not take the above
+ precautions, you may discover that a template instantiation with the same
+ argument list, but instantiated in multiple translation units, has several
+ addresses, depending in which translation unit the address is taken. (This
+ is not an exhaustive list of the kind of objects which have vague linkage
+ and are expected to be resolved during linking & loading.)
+
+ If you are worried about different objects with the same name colliding
+ during the linking or loading process, then you should use namespaces to
+ disambiguate them. Giving distinct objects with global linkage the same name
+ is a violation of the One Definition Rule (ODR) [basic.def.odr].
+
+ For more details about the way that GCC implements these and other C++
+ features, please read the [35]ABI specification. Note the std::type_info
+ objects which must be resolved all begin with "_ZTS". Refer to ld's
+ documentation for a description of the "-E" & "-Bsymbolic" flags.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Why do I need autoconf, bison, xgettext, automake, etc?
+
+ If you're using diffs up dated from one snapshot to the next, or if you're
+ using the SVN repository, you may need several additional programs to build
+ GCC.
+
+ These include, but are not necessarily limited to autoconf, automake, bison,
+ and xgettext.
+
+ This is necessary because neither diff nor cvs keep timestamps correct. This
+ causes problems for generated files as "make" may think those generated
+ files are out of date and try to regenerate them.
+
+ An easy way to work around this problem is to use the gcc_update script in
+ the contrib subdirectory of GCC, which handles this transparently without
+ requiring installation of any additional tools.
+
+ When building from diffs or SVN or if you modified some sources, you may
+ also need to obtain development versions of some GNU tools, as the
+ production versions do not necessarily handle all features needed to rebuild
+ GCC.
+
+ In general, the current versions of these tools from
+ [36]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ will work. At present, Autoconf 2.50 is not
+ supported, and you will need to use Autoconf 2.13; work is in progress to
+ fix this problem. Also look at [37]ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/
+ for any special versions of packages.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Why can't I build a shared library?
+
+ When building a shared library you may get an error message from the linker
+ like `assert pure-text failed:' or `DP relative code in file'.
+
+ This kind of error occurs when you've failed to provide proper flags to gcc
+ when linking the shared library.
+
+ You can get this error even if all the .o files for the shared library were
+ compiled with the proper PIC option. When building a shared library, gcc
+ will compile additional code to be included in the library. That additional
+ code must also be compiled with the proper PIC option.
+
+ Adding the proper PIC option (-fpic or -fPIC) to the link line which creates
+ the shared library will fix this problem on targets that support PIC in this
+ manner. For example:
+ gcc -c -fPIC myfile.c
+ gcc -shared -o libmyfile.so -fPIC myfile.o
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+When building C++, the linker says my constructors, destructors or virtual
+tables are undefined, but I defined them
+
+ The ISO C++ Standard specifies that all virtual methods of a class that are
+ not pure-virtual must be defined, but does not require any diagnostic for
+ violations of this rule [class.virtual]/8. Based on this assumption, GCC
+ will only emit the implicitly defined constructors, the assignment operator,
+ the destructor and the virtual table of a class in the translation unit that
+ defines its first such non-inline method.
+
+ Therefore, if you fail to define this particular method, the linker may
+ complain about the lack of definitions for apparently unrelated symbols.
+ Unfortunately, in order to improve this error message, it might be necessary
+ to change the linker, and this can't always be done.
+
+ The solution is to ensure that all virtual methods that are not pure are
+ defined. Note that a destructor must be defined even if it is declared
+ pure-virtual [class.dtor]/7.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Will GCC someday include an incremental linker?
+
+ Incremental linking is part of the linker, not the compiler. As such, GCC
+ doesn't have anything to do with incremental linking. Depending on what
+ platform you use, it may be possible to tell GCC to use the platform's
+ native linker (e.g., Solaris' ild(1)).
+
+References
+
+ 1. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html
+ 2. http://c-faq.com/
+ 3. http://www.comeaucomputing.com/csc/faq.html
+ 4. http://www.fortran.com/fortran/info.html
+ 5. http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq/index.html
+ 6. http://gcc.gnu.org/java/faq.html
+ 7. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#general
+ 8. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#open-development
+ 9. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#support
+ 10. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#platforms
+ 11. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#installation
+ 12. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#multiple
+ 13. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#rpath
+ 14. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#rpath
+ 15. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#gas
+ 16. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#environ
+ 17. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#optimizing
+ 18. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#iconv
+ 19. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#testsuite
+ 20. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#testoptions
+ 21. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#multipletests
+ 22. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#misc
+ 23. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#friend
+ 24. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#dso
+ 25. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#generated_files
+ 26. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#picflag-needed
+ 27. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#vtables
+ 28. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#incremental
+ 29. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#cathedral-vs-bazaar
+ 30. http://gcc.gnu.org/bugs.html
+ 31. http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html
+ 32. http://gcc.gnu.org/buildstat.html
+ 33. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#gas
+ 34. http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html
+ 35. http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/
+ 36. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/
+ 37. ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/