Re: gcc and C++0x on Mac OS X

[John Swensen]

On Oct 26, 2010, at 10:38 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> On 26 October 2010 04:00, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On Oct 26, 2010, at 3:20 PM, Kai Habel wrote:
> 
>>> P.S. Is there a more recent gcc suite available from Apple/for
>>> MacOS for you to test with?
> 
>> Unfortunately, I've not been successful mixing versions of gcc since
>> libtool was added. Thus, to build with a different version of gcc,
>> I'd have to rebuild all the dependencies. Which is a task I've not
>> attempted before.
> 
> I'm a little worried about this. Apple is quite clearly trying to move
> away from gcc. They stopped using gcc when it became GPLv3 and are
> pouring all of their efforts in clang instead. I would like to be able
> to start using C++0x constructs in Octave, but this is going to be
> impossible with gcc on Mac OS X if you can't update it.
> 
> Is this an actual concern, or am I worried over nothing? How backwards
> compatible should Octave's code remain? C++0x will mostly likely be
> finalised by 2012, by the estimates I've seen, and gcc already
> implements much of it. By contrast, clang is way behind. Many C++0x
> features could clean up Octave code. Will we be able to use them?
> 
> - Jordi G. H.

My recent compilations have all been using the GCC 4.4.5 as provide by 
MacPorts.  The only dependency I have to compile on my own is FLTK, as the 
NO_X11 variant for MacPorts doesn't provide a OpenGL capable compilation of 
FLTK.  MacPorts also provides GCC 4.5.1 and GCC 4.6 (I'm not sure when all the 
C++0x feature became available), but I haven't compiled Octave with either one 
of them.

On the other hand, getting Octave to compile with clang and llvm *may have* 
some advantages.  I am not a compiler expert by any stretch of anyone's 
imagination, but earlier discussion on the mailing list indicated that LLVM may 
provide the shortest path to JIT compilation via a transformation of the Octave 
Parser tree into an LLVM compatible format.  Has anyone successfully compiled 
even the most recent sources with clang/clang++/llvm?  Does anyone know how the 
GCC frontend for LLVM works?  Would it still provide the JIT possibilities 
without using clang/clang++?

John Swensen