• General Steps
• Dependency
• Building
  • GNU Autotools
  • gmp
  • isl
  • mpfr
  • mpc
  • gcc
• Notes

Sometimes we need our own version of gcc (often the latest versions) to use the new features in C++. This means we need to compile the source code on the machine, which can be difficult.

General Steps

1. Download the source code.
2. Perform a out-of-source build.
3. Installing dependencies: mpc, mpfr, gmp, isl
4. Configure with configure.
5. Compile & Link with make

Dependency

The relationship between all packages are

Therefore, we can install the packages in the following order,

gmp -> isl -> mpfr -> mpc -> gcc

Building

GNU Autotools

The building process or all preceding libraries are handled by the GNU Autotools, and we typically interact with the building system via the following command:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Afterwards, the package will be installed to the default directory /usr/local. This is the reason why we need to use sudo privilege in the final step. Because we need to copy the building results into places like /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib, which require sudo privilege.

If we want to install the library/binary into a custom place, we need to specify the --prefix option. My personal reference is to install all custom libraries into $HOME/.local, with command

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local
make
make install

Since the packages are installed into user–owned directories, we can do make install directly without sudo privilege. This is extremely helpful if we were working on a cluster and we want customised environment¹.

I highly recommend to read the help information for the configuration by,

./configure --help

I always find ways to solve my building problems by reading it carefully.

gmp

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local
make
make install

isl

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local --with-gmp-prefix=$HOME/.local
make
make install

mpfr

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local --with-gmp=$HOME/.local
make
make install

mpc

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local --with-gmp=$HOME/.local --with-mpfr=$HOME/.local
make
make install

gcc

./configure \
--prefix=$HOME/.local \
--with-gmp=$HOME/.local \
--with-mpc=$HOME/.local \
--with-mpfr=$HOME/.local \
--with-isl=$HOME/.local \
--enable-languages=c,c++,fortran \
--disable-multilib
make
make install

Notes

• We need to unset C/C++ related flags with command unset.