Hello everyone,
Just wanted to share my disappointment: I just realized that,
because of the introduction of C++11 features, the "parallel"
package cannot be installed on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
(DISCLAIMER : I don't personally use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the
problem happened for a colleague that has to use it.)
The reason is that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS has gcc 4.6.3, which only
has a limited support for C++11 features (and apparently not the
ones needed by the parallel package, I have bypassed the
configure check and can confirm than compilation indeed fails).
I wouldn't call Ubuntu 12.04 LTS a *very*
old release. It is certainly old in some sense, but Ubuntu
12.04 LTS was release only four years ago, Ubuntu 12.04.5 two
years ago, and this distribution hasn't reached its "end of
life" date...
I haven't tested, but the same can be said of Debian Wheezy
(7.0), which was released in 2013 and will reach its LTS end of
life in May 2018. Wheezy has gcc 4.7, with a better but still
incomplete support of C++11...
I have seen messages in the mailing list suggesting that more
and more C++11 feature are starting to be used in Octave
itself...
Yes, the next major release, 4.2, will require C++11 for the core.
It will have been at least 5+ years since these features started to
become available in compilers so we haven't been exactly hurrying to
adopt new syntax.
Does anyone know what is currently the oldest version of gcc
that can compile octave stable ? default ?
I think it is important to differentiate between Octave core and
packages maintained at Octave Forge. The stable version of core
Octave should still be able to be compiled on 12.04. The policies
of any particular Octave Forge package, however, are set by the
package maintainer. If they want to require something different
they can.
I do think Tatsuro's suggestion to build a more modern gcc is good
if you absolutely must continue on 12.04.
--Rik
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