g++ versions

g++ versions

[Robert Jones]

I'm new to this list, so apologies if all this is done-and-dusted, but I'm
struggling to understand what the latest available version of gcc/g++ is
for Cygwin or MinGW.

The version of gcc that comes with Gygwin or MinGW download is 3.4.2
or 3.4.4, which is pretty old. I'm assuming these are latest available binaries
for these platforms?

Turning to source distributions the latest info for Cygwin suggests a build
attempt has been made for 4.3.1, but there are lots of failures. I can't
see anything for the MinGW platform.

Is this right? Is there really no recent version of gcc that compiles under
any windows platform?

Thanks, Rob.

RE: g++ versions

[John (Eljay) Love-Jensen]

Hi Rob,

Using Cygwin SETUP.EXE, the GCC that is available from that installer is the latest GCC that works on Cygwin.

There are several issues in trying to get the latest GCC up-and-running under Cygwin.

I read the issues a while back, but did not note exactly what they were, or the URL that enumerated the issues.  [Sorry.  Hopefully someone a little closer to the problem can cite both.  Or dig around in the gcc-help archives.]

There are several people working on getting the latest GCC working properly (i.e., no surprises when you compile and run your code) on Cygwin.  Since there have been several releases of GCC since 3.4, I think that is indicative that the "get GCC working on Cygwin" problem is hard.

I do not know if the GCC problems with Cygwin are the same with MinGW's GCC.  (I see MinGW has a GCC 4.3 available, but it is tagged as "testing".  MinGW 5.1.3 installer looks like it comes with GCC 3.4 as stock.)

Sincerely,
--Eljay

Re: g++ versions

[Robert Jones]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 1:36 PM, John (Eljay) Love-Jensen
<eljay@adobe.com> wrote:
> Hi Rob,
>
> Using Cygwin SETUP.EXE, the GCC that is available from that installer is the latest GCC that works on Cygwin.
>
> There are several issues in trying to get the latest GCC up-and-running under Cygwin.
>
> I read the issues a while back, but did not note exactly what they were, or the URL that enumerated the issues.  [Sorry.  Hopefully someone a little closer to the problem can cite both.  Or dig around in the gcc-help archives.]
>
> There are several people working on getting the latest GCC working properly (i.e., no surprises when you compile and run your code) on Cygwin.  Since there have been several releases of GCC since 3.4, I think that is indicative that the "get GCC working on Cygwin" problem is hard.
>
> I do not know if the GCC problems with Cygwin are the same with MinGW's GCC.  (I see MinGW has a GCC 4.3 available, but it is tagged as "testing".  MinGW 5.1.3 installer looks like it comes with GCC 3.4 as stock.)
>
> Sincerely,
> --Eljay
>

Ok, thanks Eljay. I had picked up some chatter about there being gcc
issues under Cygwin,
but hadn't appreciated they were such show-stoppers. I hope someone
comes forward
with a bit more detail, but in the meantime thanks for confirming that
I'm not being a
complete muppet over this. At least I won't waste time hunting for
something that isn't there!

Rob.

Re: g++ versions

[Tim Prince]

Robert Jones wrote:
> I'm new to this list, so apologies if all this is done-and-dusted, but I'm
> struggling to understand what the latest available version of gcc/g++ is
> for Cygwin or MinGW.
> 
> The version of gcc that comes with Gygwin or MinGW download is 3.4.2
> or 3.4.4, which is pretty old. I'm assuming these are latest available binaries
> for these platforms?
> 
> Turning to source distributions the latest info for Cygwin suggests a build
> attempt has been made for 4.3.1, but there are lots of failures. I can't
> see anything for the MinGW platform.
> 
> Is this right? Is there really no recent version of gcc that compiles under
> any windows platform?
> 
> Thanks, Rob.
Turning to the cygwin install menu and mailing list archives would help to
answer the question.  As I recall, yesterday they promised a gcc-4.4 build
including OpenMP for the first time, to come out on the cygwin install
menu within a week.  It remains to be seen how buggy it may be.

There are at least 3 popular sources for mingw builds; one which includes
support libraries and Fortran, and soon will include C++, is the gfortran
wiki.

I don't understand your last question. Have you tried to build gcc on
Windows yourself, or read any posted comments on it?  I'm about to go to
my office and check the success of my gcc-testsuite run, which I will post
if at all meaningful.
Yes, many of the people who support gcc for Windows do it by cross builds.
 Are you objecting to that?  After all, Windows is intentionally designed
to require work-arounds not common to any other OS.
I should have taken the hint from Tbird and not dredged this out of the
spam folder.

Re: g++ versions

[Robert Jones]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Tim Prince <TimothyPrince@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Turning to the cygwin install menu and mailing list archives would help to
> answer the question.  As I recall, yesterday they promised a gcc-4.4 build
> including OpenMP for the first time, to come out on the cygwin install
> menu within a week.  It remains to be seen how buggy it may be.
>
> There are at least 3 popular sources for mingw builds; one which includes
> support libraries and Fortran, and soon will include C++, is the gfortran
> wiki.
>
> I don't understand your last question. Have you tried to build gcc on
> Windows yourself, or read any posted comments on it?  I'm about to go to
> my office and check the success of my gcc-testsuite run, which I will post
> if at all meaningful.
> Yes, many of the people who support gcc for Windows do it by cross builds.
>  Are you objecting to that?  After all, Windows is intentionally designed
> to require work-arounds not common to any other OS.
> I should have taken the hint from Tbird and not dredged this out of the
> spam folder.
>

Hi Tim

"Dredged out of the spam folder", - gosh a promotion ;)

I'm unclear what you mean by the Cygwin install menu - is that the setup
program?

I haven't tried to build gcc on Windows, largely because it is unclear to
me exactly which version it would be useful to try to build, hence asking
the original question.

My aim is simply to arrive at fairly recent (ie version 4) g++ compiler for
Windows, either a binary download or one I build myself, but the build
reports seem to suggest that all the v4 windows build attempts have many
failures.

If I've got this wrong please let me know - I'd be delighted to be wrong!

Thanks, Rob

Re: g++ versions

[David Gressett]

Robert Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Tim Prince <TimothyPrince@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>   
>> Turning to the cygwin install menu and mailing list archives would help to
>> answer the question.  As I recall, yesterday they promised a gcc-4.4 build
>> including OpenMP for the first time, to come out on the cygwin install
>> menu within a week.  It remains to be seen how buggy it may be.
>>
>> There are at least 3 popular sources for mingw builds; one which includes
>> support libraries and Fortran, and soon will include C++, is the gfortran
>> wiki.
>>
>> I don't understand your last question. Have you tried to build gcc on
>> Windows yourself, or read any posted comments on it?  I'm about to go to
>> my office and check the success of my gcc-testsuite run, which I will post
>> if at all meaningful.
>> Yes, many of the people who support gcc for Windows do it by cross builds.
>>  Are you objecting to that?  After all, Windows is intentionally designed
>> to require work-arounds not common to any other OS.
>> I should have taken the hint from Tbird and not dredged this out of the
>> spam folder.
>>
>>     
>
> Hi Tim
>
> "Dredged out of the spam folder", - gosh a promotion ;)
>
> I'm unclear what you mean by the Cygwin install menu - is that the setup
> program?
>
> I haven't tried to build gcc on Windows, largely because it is unclear to
> me exactly which version it would be useful to try to build, hence asking
> the original question.
>
> My aim is simply to arrive at fairly recent (ie version 4) g++ compiler for
> Windows, either a binary download or one I build myself, but the build
> reports seem to suggest that all the v4 windows build attempts have many
> failures.
>
> If I've got this wrong please let me know - I'd be delighted to be wrong!
>
> Thanks, Rob
>   
You should also read the MinGW mailing list; there has been much recent 
discussion about the slow progress of gcc in MinGW and the reasons for 
that slow pace..

To make a long story short, Windows is a difficult system on which to 
get gcc working properly. It wasn't intentionally designed to be 
difficult, but unintentional design is quite adequate for producing 
major difficulties. :) Exception handling is a major problem which is 
still not completely solved in the currently-available MinGW V4

Re: g++ versions

[Tim Prince]

Robert Jones wrote:

> I'm unclear what you mean by the Cygwin install menu - is that the setup
> program?
Yes, cygwin setup menu has included g++-4 and its cousins for several months.
> 

> My aim is simply to arrive at fairly recent (ie version 4) g++ compiler for
> Windows, either a binary download or one I build myself, but the build
> reports seem to suggest that all the v4 windows build attempts have many
> failures.

Well, let's be more specific.  Windows targets are at best secondary for
gcc.  This means the gcc developers have latitude about the degree of
Windows support in testsuite for each front end.
Out of 13 failures in the g++ section of gcc-testsuite for cygwin in last
Friday's gcc-4.4 snapshot, 9 are due to minor formatting discrepancies
between the linux and Windows versions of .s file.  Let's give the g++
people some credit for major progress.
Most of the libstdc++ testsuite failures are due to the broken scheme in
testsuite of attempting to link against libiconv.  Many people don't care
about libiconv, which probably bears on why it isn't fixed.
The gcc people don't care to make testsuite entirely meaningful on
Windows.  In addition to testing functionality which will never be
supported on Windows, without marking those tests as XFAIL, and not
allowing the bsd variations of tests rather than linux ones to be used for
Windows, there are major categories of Windows failures, e.g. pch,
vectorization (even though vectorization basically works).  The greatest
gross number of failures I have seen in repetitions of gcc testsuite is
177, out of more than 20000.  If you prefer a version of gcc which hasn't
been run through testsuite publically, be my guest.
The gfortran tests which fail are all OS-specific, and have been discussed
on the gfortran list.
objc testsuite gives the same results as on most primary targets.
gomp testsuite, if enabled, doesn't give many errors.  That doesn't
necessarily translate into a reliable option.  After all, it's built on
pthreads without much specific Windows stuff, aside from the proprietary
mingw offering with an alternate library of unknown origin or licensing
compliance.
mingw versions of gcc often have major gaps in exception handling,
fast-math, profiling, and thread support, so there are many expected
testsuite failures.  That doesn't make them unusable, within their limits.
You certainly can't expect the testsuite cases which test for presence of
glibc specific directories to pass on Windows.
I'll post this week's gcc-testsuite for cygwin soon.  Have to decide
whether to let it complete the extra rounds it chooses to make when there
are failures.
Do you care about work-arounds for building gcc on cygwin?