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1<html>
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3<head>
4<title>GCC Frequently Asked Questions</title>
5</head>
6
7<body>
8
9<h1>GCC Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
10
11<p>The latest version of this document is always available at
12<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html">http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html</a>.</p>
13
14<p>This FAQ tries to answer specific questions concerning GCC. For
15general information regarding C, C++, resp. Fortran please check the
16<a href="http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html">comp.lang.c FAQ</a>,
17<a href="http://www.jamesd.demon.co.uk/csc/faq.html">comp.std.c++
18FAQ</a>,
19and the <a href="http://www.fortran.com/fortran/info.html">Fortran
20Information page</a>.</p>
21
22<p>Other GCC-related FAQs:
23 <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq/index.html">
24 libstdc++-v3</a>, and
25 <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/java/faq.html">GCJ</a>.</p>
26
27<hr />
28<h1>Questions</h1>
29<ol>
30 <li><a href="#general">General information</a>
31 <ol>
32 <li><a href="#gcc">What is the relationship between GCC and EGCS?</a></li>
33 <li><a href="#open-development">What is an open development model?</a></li>
34 <li><a href="#support">How do I get a bug fixed or a feature added?</a></li>
35 <li><a href="#platforms">Does GCC work on my platform?</a></li>
36 </ol></li>
37
38 <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a>
39 <ol>
40 <li><a href="#multiple">How to install multiple versions of GCC</a></li>
41 <li><a href="#rpath">Dynamic linker is unable to find GCC libraries</a></li>
42 <li><a href="#rpath">libstdc++/libio tests fail badly with --enable-shared</a></li>
43 <li><a href="#gas">GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld</a></li>
44 <li><a href="#environ">cpp: Usage:... Error</a></li>
45 <li><a href="#optimizing">Optimizing the compiler itself</a></li>
46 <li><a href="#iconv">Why does <code>libiconv</code> get linked into <code>jc1</code> on Solaris?</a></li>
47 </ol></li>
48
49 <li><a href="#testsuite">Testsuite problems</a>
50 <ol>
51 <li><a href="#testoptions">How do I pass flags like
52 <code>-fnew-abi</code> to the testsuite?</a></li>
53 <li><a href="#multipletests">How can I run the test suite with multiple options?</a></li>
54 </ol></li>
55
56 <li><a href="#old">Older versions of GCC</a>
57 <ol>
58 <li><a href="#2.95sstream">Is there a stringstream / sstream for GCC 2.95.2?</a></li>
59 </ol></li>
60
61 <li><a href="#misc">Miscellaneous</a>
62 <ol>
63 <li><a href="#friend">Friend Templates</a></li>
64 <li><a href="#dso"><code>dynamic_cast</code>, <code>throw</code>, <code>typeid</code> don't work with shared libraries</a></li>
65 <li><a href="#generated_files">Why do I need autoconf, bison, xgettext, automake, etc?</a></li>
66 <li><a href="#picflag-needed">Why can't I build a shared library?</a></li>
67 <li><a href="#vtables">When building C++, the linker says my constructors, destructors or virtual tables are undefined, but I defined them</a></li>
68 <li><a href="#incremental">Will GCC someday include an incremental linker?</a></li>
69 </ol></li>
70</ol>
71
72
73<hr />
74<a name="general"></a>
75<h1>General information</h1>
76
77<h2><a name="gcc">What is the relationship between GCC and EGCS?</a></h2>
78
79<p>In 1990/1991 gcc version 1 had reached a point of stability. For the
80targets it could support, it worked well. It had limitations inherent in
81its design that would be difficult to resolve, so a major effort was made
82to resolve those limitations and gcc version 2 was the result.</p>
83
84<p>When we had gcc2 in a useful state, development efforts on gcc1 stopped
85and we all concentrated on making gcc2 better than gcc1 could ever be. This
86is the kind of step forward we wanted to make with the EGCS project when it
87was formed in 1997.</p>
88
89<p>In April 1999 the Free Software Foundation officially halted
90development on the gcc2 compiler and appointed the EGCS project as the
91official GCC maintainers. The net result was a single project which
92carries forward GCC development under the ultimate control of the
93<a href="steering.html">GCC Steering Committee</a>.</p>
94
95
96<hr />
97<h2><a name="open-development">What is an open development model?</a></h2>
98
99<p>We are using a bazaar style
100<a href="#cathedral-vs-bazaar"><b>[1]</b></a>
101approach to GCC development: we make snapshots publicly available to
102anyone who wants to try them; we welcome anyone to join
103the development mailing list. All of the discussions on the
104development mailing list are available via the web. We're going to be
105making releases with a much higher frequency than they have been made
106in the past.</p>
107
108<p>In addition to weekly snapshots of the GCC development sources, we
109have the sources readable from a CVS server by anyone. Furthermore we
110are using remote CVS to allow remote maintainers write access to the
111sources.</p>
112
113<p>There have been many potential GCC developers who were not able to
114participate in GCC development in the past. We want these people to
115help in any way they can; we ultimately want GCC to be the best compiler
116in the world.</p>
117
118<p>A compiler is a complicated piece of software, there will still be
119strong central maintainers who will reject patches, who will demand
120documentation of implementations, and who will keep the level of
121quality as high as it is today. Code that could use wider testing may
122be integrated--code that is simply ill-conceived won't be.</p>
123
124<p>GCC is not the first piece of software to use this open development
125process; FreeBSD, the Emacs lisp repository, and the Linux kernel are
126a few examples of the bazaar style of development.</p>
127
128<p>With GCC, we are adding new features and optimizations at a
129rate that has not been done since the creation of gcc2; these
130additions inevitably have a temporarily destabilizing effect.
131With the help of developers working together with this bazaar style
132development, the resulting stability and quality levels will be better
133than we've had before.</p>
134
135<blockquote>
136<a name="cathedral-vs-bazaar"><b>[1]</b></a>
137 We've been discussing different development models a lot over the
138 past few months. The paper which started all of this introduced two
139 terms: A <b>cathedral</b> development model versus a <b>bazaar</b>
140 development model. The paper is written by Eric S. Raymond, it is
141 called ``The Cathedral and the Bazaar''.
142 The paper is a useful starting point for discussions.
143</blockquote>
144
145<hr />
146<!-- The "bugreport" anchor was used in ICE messages of GCC < 2.95.3. -->
147<h2 id="bugreport"><a name="support">How do I get a bug fixed or
148 a feature added?</a></h2>
149
150<p>There are lots of ways to get something fixed. The list below may be
151incomplete, but it covers many of the common cases. These are listed
152roughly in order of decreasing difficulty for the average GCC user,
153meaning someone who is not skilled in the internals of GCC, and where
154difficulty is measured in terms of the time required to fix the bug.
155No alternative is better than any other; each has its benefits and
156disadvantages.</p>
157
158<ul>
159<li>Fix it yourself. This alternative will probably bring results,
160 if you work hard enough, but will probably take a lot of time,
161 and, depending on the quality of your work and the perceived
162 benefits of your changes, your code may or may not ever make it
163 into an official release of GCC.</li>
164
165<li><a href="bugs.html">Report the problem to the GCC bug tracking system</a>
166 and hope that someone will be kind
167 enough to fix it for you. While this is certainly possible, and
168 often happens, there is no guarantee that it will. You should
169 not expect the same response from this method that you would see
170 from a commercial support organization since the people who read
171 GCC bug reports, if they choose to help you, will be volunteering their
172 time.</li>
173
174<li>Hire someone to fix it for you. There are various companies and
175 individuals providing support for GCC. This alternative costs
176 money, but is relatively likely to get results.</li>
177</ul>
178
179<hr />
180
181<h2><a name="platforms">Does GCC work on my platform?</a></h2>
182
183<p>The host/target specific installation notes for GCC include information
184about known problems with installing or using GCC on particular platforms.
185These are included in the sources for a release in INSTALL/specific.html,
186and the <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html">latest version</a>
187is always available at the GCC web site.
188Reports of <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/buildstat.html">successful builds</a>
189for several versions of GCC are also available at the web site.</p>
190
191<hr />
192<a name="installation"></a>
193<h1>Installation</h1>
194
195<h2><a name="multiple">How to install multiple versions of GCC</a></h2>
196
197<p>It may be desirable to install multiple versions of the compiler on
198the same system. This can be done by using different prefix paths at
199configure time and a few symlinks.</p>
200
201<p>Basically, configure the two compilers with different --prefix options,
202then build and install each compiler. Assume you want "gcc" to be the latest
203compiler and available in /usr/local/bin; also assume that you want "gcc2"
204to be the older gcc2 compiler and also available in /usr/local/bin.</p>
205
206<p>The easiest way to do this is to configure the new GCC with
207<code>--prefix=/usr/local/gcc</code> and the older gcc2 with
208<code>--prefix=/usr/local/gcc2</code>. Build and install both
209compilers. Then make a symlink from <code>/usr/local/bin/gcc</code>
210to <code>/usr/local/gcc/bin/gcc</code> and from
211<code>/usr/local/bin/gcc2</code> to
212<code>/usr/local/gcc2/bin/gcc</code>. Create similar links for the
213"g++", "c++" and "g77" compiler drivers.</p>
214
215<p>An alternative to using symlinks is to configure with a
216<code>--program-transform-name</code> option. This option specifies a
217sed command to process installed program names with. Using it you can,
218for instance, have all the new GCC programs installed as "new-gcc" and
219the like. You will still have to specify different
220<code>--prefix</code> options for new GCC and old GCC, because it is
221only the executable program names that are transformed. The difference
222is that you (as administrator) do not have to set up symlinks, but
223must specify additional directories in your (as a user) PATH. A
224complication with <code>--program-transform-name</code> is that the
225sed command invariably contains characters significant to the shell,
226and these have to be escaped correctly, also it is not possible to use
227"^" or "$" in the command. Here is the option to prefix "new-" to the
228new GCC installed programs:</p>
229<blockquote><code>
230--program-transform-name='s,\\\\(.*\\\\),new-\\\\1,'
231</code></blockquote>
232<p>With the above <code>--prefix</code> option, that will install the new
233GCC programs into <code>/usr/local/gcc/bin</code> with names prefixed
234by "new-". You can use <code>--program-transform-name</code> if you
235have multiple versions of GCC, and wish to be sure about which version
236you are invoking.</p>
237
238<p>If you use <code>--prefix</code>, GCC may have difficulty locating a GNU
239assembler or linker on your system, <a href="#gas">GCC can not find GNU
240as/GNU ld</a> explains how to deal with this.</p>
241
242<p>Another option that may be easier is to use the
243<code>--program-prefix=</code> or <code>--program-suffix=</code>
244options to configure. So if you're installing GCC 2.95.2 and don't
245want to disturb the current version of GCC in
246<code>/usr/local/bin/</code>, you could do</p>
247<blockquote><code>
248configure --program-suffix=-2.95.2 &lt;other configure options&gt;
249</code></blockquote>
250<p>This should result in GCC being installed as
251<code>/usr/local/bin/gcc-2.95.2</code> instead of
252<code>/usr/local/bin/gcc</code>.</p>
253
254<hr />
255<h2><a name="rpath">Dynamic linker is unable to find GCC libraries</a></h2>
256
257<p>This problem manifests itself by programs not finding shared
258libraries they depend on when the programs are started. Note this
259problem often manifests itself with failures in the libio/libstdc++
260tests after configuring with <code>--enable-shared</code> and building GCC.</p>
261
262<p>GCC does not specify a runpath so that the dynamic linker can find
263dynamic libraries at runtime.</p>
264
265<p>The short explanation is that if you always pass a -R option to the
266linker, then your programs become dependent on directories which
267may be NFS mounted, and programs may hang unnecessarily when an
268NFS server goes down.</p>
269
270<p>The problem is not programs that do require the directories; those
271programs are going to hang no matter what you do. The problem is
272programs that do not require the directories.</p>
273
274<p>SunOS effectively always passed a <code>-R</code> option for every
275<code>-L</code> option; this was a bad idea, and so it was removed for
276Solaris. We should not recreate it.</p>
277
278<p>However, if you feel you really need such an option to be passed
279automatically to the linker, you may add it to the GCC specs file.
280This file can be found in the same directory that contains cc1 (run
281<code>gcc -print-prog-name=cc1</code> to find it). You may add linker
282flags such as <code>-R</code> or <code>-rpath</code>, depending on
283platform and linker, to the <code>*link</code> or <code>*lib</code>
284specs.</p>
285
286<p>Another alternative is to install a wrapper script around gcc, g++
287or ld that adds the appropriate directory to the environment variable
288<code>LD_RUN_PATH</code> or equivalent (again, it's
289platform-dependent).</p>
290
291<p>Yet another option, that works on a few platforms, is to hard-code
292the full pathname of the library into its soname. This can only be
293accomplished by modifying the appropriate <tt>.ml</tt> file within
294<tt>libstdc++/config</tt> (and also <tt>libg++/config</tt>, if you are
295building libg++), so that <code>$(libdir)/</code> appears just before
296the library name in <code>-soname</code> or <code>-h</code> options.</p>
297
298<hr />
299<h2><a name="gas">GCC can not find GNU as/GNU ld</a></h2>
300<p>GCC searches the PATH for an assembler and a loader, but it only
301does so after searching a directory list hard-coded in the GCC
302executables. Since, on most platforms, the hard-coded list includes
303directories in which the system assembler and loader can be found, you
304may have to take one of the following actions to arrange that GCC uses
305the GNU versions of those programs.</p>
306
307<p>To ensure that GCC finds the GNU assembler (the GNU loader), which
308are required by <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html">some
309configurations</a>,
310you should configure these with the same --prefix option as you used
311for GCC. Then build &amp; install GNU as (GNU ld) and proceed with
312building GCC.</p>
313
314<p>Another alternative is to create links to GNU as and ld in any of
315the directories printed by the command `<tt>gcc -print-search-dirs |
316grep '^programs:'</tt>'. The link to `<tt>ld</tt>' should be named
317`<tt>real-ld</tt>' if `<tt>ld</tt>' already exists. If such links do
318not exist while you're compiling GCC, you may have to create them in
319the build directories too, within the <tt>gcc</tt> directory
320<em>and</em> in all the <tt>gcc/stage*</tt> subdirectories.</p>
321
322<p>GCC 2.95 allows you to specify the full pathname of the assembler
323and the linker to use. The configure flags are
324`<tt>--with-as=/path/to/as</tt>' and `<tt>--with-ld=/path/to/ld</tt>'.
325GCC will try to use these pathnames before looking for `<tt>as</tt>'
326or `<tt>(real-)ld</tt>' in the standard search dirs. If, at
327configure-time, the specified programs are found to be GNU utilities,
328`<tt>--with-gnu-as</tt>' and `<tt>--with-gnu-ld</tt>' need not be
329used; these flags will be auto-detected. One drawback of this option
330is that it won't allow you to override the search path for assembler
331and linker with command-line options <tt>-B/path/</tt> if the
332specified filenames exist.</p>
333
334<hr />
335<h2><a name="environ">cpp: Usage:... Error</a></h2>
336
337<p>If you get an error like this when building GCC (particularly when building
338__mulsi3), then you likely have a problem with your environment variables.</p>
339<pre>
340 cpp: Usage: /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-unknown-linux-gnulibc1/2.7.2.3/cpp
341 [switches] input output
342</pre>
343<p>First look for an explicit '.' in either LIBRARY_PATH or GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
344from your environment. If you do not find an explicit '.', look for
345an empty pathname in those variables. Note that ':' at either the start
346or end of these variables is an implicit '.' and will cause problems.</p>
347
348<p>Also note '::' in these paths will also cause similar problems.</p>
349
350
351<hr />
352<h2><a name="optimizing">Optimizing the compiler itself</a></h2>
353
354<p>If you want to test a particular optimization option, it's useful to try
355bootstrapping the compiler with that option turned on. For example, to
356test the <code>-fssa</code> option, you could bootstrap like this:</p>
357
358<pre>make BOOT_CFLAGS="-O2 -fssa" bootstrap</pre>
359
360<hr />
361<h2><a name="iconv">Why does <code>libiconv</code> get linked into <code>jc1</code> on Solaris?</a></h2>
362
363<p>The Java front end requires <code>iconv</code>. If the compiler
364used to bootstrap GCC finds <code>libiconv</code> (because the GNU
365version of <code>libiconv</code> has been installed in the same prefix
366as the bootstrap compiler), but the newly built GCC does not find the
367library (because it will be installed with a different prefix), then a
368link-time error will occur when building <code>jc1</code>. This
369problem does not show up so often on platforms that have
370<code>libiconv</code> in a default location (like
371<code>/usr/lib</code>) because then both compilers can find a library
372named <code>libiconv</code>, even though it is a different
373library.</p>
374
375<p>Using <code>--disable-nls</code> at configure-time does not
376prevent this problem because <code>jc1</code> uses
377<code>iconv</code> even in that case. Solutions include temporarily
378removing the GNU <code>libiconv</code>, copying it to a default
379location such as <code>/usr/lib/</code>, and using
380<code>--enable-languages</code> at configure-time to disable Java.</p>
381
382<hr />
383<a name="testsuite"></a>
384<h1>Testsuite problems</h1>
385
386<h2><a name="testoptions">How do I pass flags like
387 <code>-fnew-abi</code> to the testsuite?</a></h2>
388
389<p>If you invoke <code>runtest</code> directly, you can use the
390<code>--tool_opts</code> option, e.g:</p>
391<pre>
392 runtest --tool_opts "-fnew-abi -fno-honor-std" &lt;other options&gt;
393</pre>
394<p>Or, if you use <code>make check</code> you can use the
395<code>make</code> variable <code>RUNTESTFLAGS</code>, e.g:</p>
396<pre>
397 make RUNTESTFLAGS="--tool_opts '-fnew-abi -fno-honor-std'" check-g++
398</pre>
399
400<hr />
401<h2><a name="multipletests"> How can I run the test suite with multiple options? </a></h2>
402
403<p>If you invoke <code>runtest</code> directly, you can use the
404<code>--target_board</code> option, e.g:</p>
405<pre>
406 runtest --target_board "unix{-fPIC,-fpic,}" &lt;other options&gt;
407</pre>
408<p>Or, if you use <code>make check</code> you can use the
409<code>make</code> variable <code>RUNTESTFLAGS</code>, e.g:</p>
410<pre>
411 make RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board 'unix{-fPIC,-fpic,}'" check-gcc
412</pre>
413<p>Either of these examples will run the tests three times. Once
414with <code>-fPIC</code>, once with <code>-fpic</code>, and once with
415no additional flags.</p>
416
417<p>This technique is particularly useful on multilibbed targets.</p>
418
419<hr />
420<a name="old"></a>
421<h1>Older versions of GCC and EGCS</h1>
422
423<h2><a name="2.95sstream">Is there a stringstream / sstream for GCC 2.95.2?</a></h2>
424
425<p>Yes, it's at:
426<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2000-q2/msg00700/sstream">
427 http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2000-q2/msg00700/sstream</a>.</p>
428
429<hr />
430<a name="misc"></a>
431<h1>Miscellaneous</h1>
432
433
434<h2><a name="friend">Friend Templates</a></h2>
435
436<p>In order to make a specialization of a template function a friend
437of a (possibly template) class, you must explicitly state that the
438friend function is a template, by appending angle brackets to its
439name, and this template function must have been declared already.
440Here's an example:</p>
441<pre>
442template &lt;typename T&gt; class foo {
443 friend void bar(foo&lt;T&gt;);
444}
445</pre>
446<p>The above declaration declares a non-template function named
447<code>bar</code>, so it must be explicitly defined for <b>each</b>
448specialization of <code>foo</code>. A template definition of <code>bar</code>
449won't do, because it is unrelated with the non-template declaration
450above. So you'd have to end up writing:</p>
451<pre>
452void bar(foo&lt;int&gt;) { /* ... */ }
453void bar(foo&lt;void&gt;) { /* ... */ }
454</pre>
455<p>If you meant <code>bar</code> to be a template function, you should
456have forward-declared it as follows. Note that, since the template
457function declaration refers to the template class, the template class
458must be forward-declared too:</p>
459<pre>
460template &lt;typename T&gt;
461class foo;
462
463template &lt;typename T&gt;
464void bar(foo&lt;T&gt;);
465
466template &lt;typename T&gt;
467class foo {
468 friend void bar&lt;&gt;(foo&lt;T&gt;);
469};
470
471template &lt;typename T&gt;
472void bar(foo&lt;T&gt;) { /* ... */ }
473</pre>
474<p>In this case, the template argument list could be left empty,
475because it can be implicitly deduced from the function arguments, but
476the angle brackets must be present, otherwise the declaration will be
477taken as a non-template function. Furthermore, in some cases, you may
478have to explicitly specify the template arguments, to remove
479ambiguity.</p>
480
481<p>An error in the last public comment draft of the ANSI/ISO C++
482Standard and the fact that previous releases of GCC would accept such
483friend declarations as template declarations has led people to believe
484that the forward declaration was not necessary, but, according to the
485final version of the Standard, it is.</p>
486
487
488<hr />
489<h2><a name="dso"><code>dynamic_cast</code>, <code>throw</code>, <code>typeid</code> don't work with shared libraries</a></h2>
490
491<p>The new C++ ABI in the GCC 3.0 series uses address comparisons,
492rather than string compares, to determine type equality. This leads
493to better performance. Like other objects that have to be present in the
494final executable, these <code>std::type_info</code> objects have what
495is called vague linkage because they are not tightly bound to any one
496particular translation unit (object file). The compiler has to emit
497them in any translation unit that requires their presence, and then
498rely on the linking and loading process to make sure that only one of
499them is active in the final executable. With static linking all of
500these symbols are resolved at link time, but with dynamic linking,
501further resolution occurs at load time. You have to ensure that
502objects within a shared library are resolved against objects in the
503executable and other shared libraries.</p>
504
505<ul>
506<li>For a program which is linked against a shared library, no additional
507precautions are needed.</li>
508
509<li>You cannot create a shared library with the "<code>-Bsymbolic</code>"
510option, as that prevents the resolution described above.</li>
511
512<li>If you use <code>dlopen</code> to explicitly load code from a shared
513library, you must do several things. First, export global symbols from
514the executable by linking it with the "<code>-E</code>" flag (you will
515have to specify this as "<code>-Wl,-E</code>" if you are invoking
516the linker in the usual manner from the compiler driver, <code>g++</code>).
517You must also make the external symbols in the loaded library
518available for subsequent libraries by providing the <code>RTLD_GLOBAL</code>
519flag to <code>dlopen</code>. The symbol resolution can be immediate or
520lazy.</li>
521
522</ul>
523
524<p>Template instantiations are another, user visible, case of objects
525with vague linkage, which needs similar resolution. If you do not take
526the above precautions, you may discover that a template instantiation
527with the same argument list, but instantiated in multiple translation
528units, has several addresses, depending in which translation unit the
529address is taken. (This is <em>not</em> an exhaustive list of the kind
530of objects which have vague linkage and are expected to be resolved
531during linking &amp; loading.)</p>
532
533<p>If you are worried about different objects with the same name
534colliding during the linking or loading process, then you should use
535namespaces to disambiguate them. Giving distinct objects with global
536linkage the same name is a violation of the One Definition Rule (ODR)
537[basic.def.odr].</p>
538
539<p>For more details about the way that GCC implements these and other
540C++ features, please read the <a
541href="http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/">ABI specification</a>.
542Note the <code>std::type_info</code> objects which <i>must</i> be
543resolved all begin with "_ZTS". Refer to <code>ld</code>'s
544documentation for a description of the "<code>-E</code>" &amp;
545"<code>-Bsymbolic</code>" flags.</p>
546
547<hr />
548<h2><a name="generated_files">Why do I need autoconf, bison, xgettext, automake, etc?</a></h2>
549
550<p>If you're using diffs up dated from one snapshot to the next, or
551if you're using the CVS repository, you may need several additional programs
552to build GCC.</p>
553
554<p>These include, but are not necessarily limited to autoconf, automake,
555bison, and xgettext.</p>
556
557<p>This is necessary because neither diff nor cvs keep timestamps
558correct. This causes problems for generated files as "make" may think
559those generated files are out of date and try to regenerate them.</p>
560
561<p>An easy way to work around this problem is to use the <code>gcc_update
562</code> script in the contrib subdirectory of GCC, which handles this
563transparently without requiring installation of any additional tools.
564(Note: Up to and including GCC 2.95 this script was called <code>egcs_update
565</code>.)</p>
566
567
568<p>When building from diffs or CVS or if you modified some sources,
569you may also need to obtain development versions of some GNU tools, as
570the production versions do not necessarily handle all features needed
571to rebuild GCC.</p>
572
573<p>In general, the current versions of these tools from <a
574href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/</a> will work.
575At present, Autoconf 2.50 is not supported, and you will need to use
576Autoconf 2.13; work is in progress to fix this problem. Also look at
577<a href="ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/">
578ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/</a> for any special versions
579of packages.</p>
580
581
582<hr />
583<h2><a name="picflag-needed">Why can't I build a shared library?</a></h2>
584
585<p>When building a shared library you may get an error message from the
586linker like `assert pure-text failed:' or `DP relative code in file'.</p>
587
588<p>This kind of error occurs when you've failed to provide proper flags
589to gcc when linking the shared library. </p>
590
591<p>You can get this error even if all the .o files for the shared library were
592compiled with the proper PIC option. When building a shared library, gcc will
593compile additional code to be included in the library. That additional code
594must also be compiled with the proper PIC option.</p>
595
596<p>Adding the proper PIC option (<tt>-fpic</tt> or <tt>-fPIC</tt>) to the link
597line which creates the shared library will fix this problem on targets that
598support PIC in this manner. For example:</p>
599<pre>
600 gcc -c -fPIC myfile.c
601 gcc -shared -o libmyfile.so -fPIC myfile.o
602</pre>
603
604
605<hr />
606<h2><a name="vtables">When building C++, the linker says my constructors, destructors or virtual tables are undefined, but I defined them</a></h2>
607
608<p>The ISO C++ Standard specifies that all virtual methods of a class
609that are not pure-virtual must be defined, but does not require any
610diagnostic for violations of this rule [class.virtual]/8. Based on
611this assumption, GCC will only emit the implicitly defined
612constructors, the assignment operator, the destructor and the virtual
613table of a class in the translation unit that defines its first such
614non-inline method.</p>
615
616<p>Therefore, if you fail to define this particular method, the linker
617may complain about the lack of definitions for apparently unrelated
618symbols. Unfortunately, in order to improve this error message, it
619might be necessary to change the linker, and this can't always be
620done.</p>
621
622<p>The solution is to ensure that all virtual methods that are not
623pure are defined. Note that a destructor must be defined even if it
624is declared pure-virtual [class.dtor]/7.</p>
625
626
627<hr />
628<h2><a name="incremental">Will GCC someday include an incremental linker?</a></h2>
629
630<p>Incremental linking is part of the linker, not the compiler. As
631such, GCC doesn't have anything to do with incremental linking.
632Depending on what platform you use, it may be possible to tell GCC to
633use the platform's native linker (e.g., Solaris' ild(1)).</p>
634
635
636</body>
637</html>
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