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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]How do I get a bug fixed or a feature added?

         2. [9]Does GCC work on my platform?

    2. [10]Installation

         1. [11]How to install multiple versions of GCC

         2. [12]Dynamic linker is unable to find GCC libraries

         3. [13]libstdc++/libio tests fail badly with --enable-shared

         4. [14]GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld

         5. [15]cpp: Usage:... Error

         6. [16]Optimizing the compiler itself

         7. [17]Why does libiconv get linked into jc1 on Solaris?

    3. [18]Testsuite problems

         1. [19]How do I pass flags like -fnew-abi to the testsuite?

         2. [20]How can I run the test suite with multiple options?

    4. [21]Miscellaneous

         1. [22]Friend Templates

         2. [23]dynamic_cast, throw, typeid don't work with shared libraries

         3. [24]Why do I need autoconf, bison, xgettext, automake, etc?

         4. [25]Why can't I build a shared library?

         5. [26]When building C++, the linker says my constructors, destructors

            or virtual tables are undefined, but I defined them

     _________________________________________________________________

                              General information

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.

     * [27]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 [28]latest version is always available at the GCC web site. Reports

   of [29]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, [30]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 

   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 [31]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" 

   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,}" 

   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  class foo {

  friend void bar(foo);

}

   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) { /* ... */ }

void bar(foo) { /* ... */ }

   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 

class foo;

template 

void bar(foo);

template 

class foo {

  friend void bar<>(foo);

};

template 

void bar(foo) { /* ... */ }

   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 [32]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

   [33]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 [34]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.

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#support

   9. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#platforms

  10. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#installation

  11. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#multiple

  12. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#rpath

  13. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#rpath

  14. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#gas

  15. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#environ

  16. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#optimizing

  17. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#iconv

  18. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#testsuite

  19. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#testoptions

  20. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#multipletests

  21. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#misc

  22. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#friend

  23. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#dso

  24. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#generated_files

  25. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#picflag-needed

  26. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#vtables

  27. http://gcc.gnu.org/bugs.html

  28. http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html

  29. http://gcc.gnu.org/buildstat.html

  30. http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#gas

  31. http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html

  32. http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/

  33. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/

  34. ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/