Details
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Type:
RFC
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Status: Implemented
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Resolution: Done
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Component/s: DM
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Labels:None
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Location:this issue page
Description
Our adoption of C++11 (and C++14 features) is held back by the very minimal (and occasionally incorrect) support for C++11 in gcc 4.4.
Major long-term-support Linux distributions that ship with gcc 4.8 have now been out for about a year now (including RHEL/CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 14.04), so it may now be reasonable to expect users currently relying on gcc 4.4 to either upgrade their OS or bear the burden of installing a newer compiler.
We could also consider providing eups distrib packages with newer compiler versions for those who need them (we do this on the HSC side).
In any case, I don't think we can simply wait for OSes that ship gcc 4.4 to go away on their own; the lifespans of those distributions are simply too long. But if certain important users are already scheduled to upgrade in the near future anyway, it may be prudent to just wait for that ourselves.
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Does this mean we have enough evidence to be able to close this RFC?
devtoolset-3 subpackages as identified by UW (preferred), eups distrib gcc, conda installation are all acceptable mechanisms for getting gcc 4.8 on RHEL6 and equivalents.
The devtoolset-3 subpackages (devtoolset-3-toolchain, devtoolset-3-perftools, & devtoolset-3-git) have now been installed on the lsst-dev.ncsa.illinois.edu server. devtoolset-2 has been removed. These devtoolset-3 subpackages will be installed on all LSST developer systems managed at NCSA. Documentation of the usage of devtoolset-3 has also been updated at:
https://confluence.lsstcorp.org/display/LDMDG/Developer+Tools+at+NCSA
devtoolset-3 has been enabled on buildbot on under jenkins on EL6 per DM-3597.
Our sysadmins at UW installed the following on a Scientific Linux release 6.6 (Carbon) machine and it worked just fine to build the LSST DM stack using "eups distrib install -t v10_1 lsst_apps":
If you do adopt devtoolset-3 as the preferred alternative for older versions of linux then please do specify a reasonable subset. The whole package is so large that I think many sysadmins will be reluctant to install it.