how-to, GCC installation

[Jonathan Wakely]

Please reply to the mailing list, not just to me, thanks.

On 8 May 2011 14:41, JF MARQUET (Y) <jfmarquet@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Thanks a lot , or more !
> This is etremely useful, and very rapid information (although we are on
> Sunday !).
> You asked me what I felt as misleading in the documentation ; for beginners
> like me (google says I am not the only one...), it is hard to imagine that
> the "prerequisites" be really meaning that you cannot install GCC if it is

That's exactly what "prerequisite" means.

"Tools/packages necessary for building GCC" means they are *necessary*
not optional.


> not....already installed or almost (!), without saying many words (without
> saying any ?) on what you should do if it is not the case (which may
> represent 99 % of people trying to install GCC out of any "good LINUX
> distribution"?).

If the prerequisites are not installed then you need to install them,
what's complicated about that?

GCC works on dozens of platforms, not just GNU/Linux, so it's not
possible to say how to install packages in general, but all platforms
have a C compiler of some sort available, usually available as
installable a binary which doesn't need to be built from sources.

For Linux you would use your distro's package manager, which is
different for Fedora, Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu, Gentoo etc. etc. For BSD
systems you would probably use the Ports system. For other operating
systems it would be different again.

I suppose we could add a note saying that if no C compiler is
available then you might need to cross-compile on another system to
produce a native compiler for your host.

> I must confess that I misunderstood what "cross-compiler"
> meant (I thought of something going from one language to another...) ; now
> that I have quickly browsed on the term "cross compiler", and with your
> precious info, I am sure to succeed, some way or another (may be I will
> "cross compile" directly the program for which I was trynig to install GCC,
> which is...mutt !).

Be aware you will also need an assembler, linker and C library to
compile programs such as mutt.