Ubuntu GCC > 4.4.x considered harmful!

Note: I’ve since updated the build server in question to Ubuntu 12.04, where the default GCC is 4.6.3. It seems that at least some of these issues have been corrected in GCC. Your mileage may vary. –Alan, April 28, 2012

I’ve been having some problems with Ubuntu 11.10’s default GCC (4.6.2) for some time now. First, I was having problems with self-kang CyanogenMod 9 builds on my Samsung Tab 7 Plus (specifically, adb wouldn’t work). Second, I couldn’t boot Linux kernel 3.3 on my Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600 build server.

I didn’t know the problems were because of GCC until recently, but now that I’ve switched back to 4.4 both of those problems have gone away; I can only assume that something in Ubuntu’s GCC fork is broken. The solution: set GCC 4.4 as the default compiler.

It’s pretty easy to do this in Debian-based distros using the alternatives system.

Install GCC 4.4

First, install GCC 4.4 (and friends):

$ apt-get install gcc-4.4 g++-4.4 g++-4.4-multilib gcc-4.4-multilib

Set 4.4 to be the default

Then set 4.4 to be higher priority than 4.6:

$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.4 100
$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.6 50
$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.4 100
$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.6 50
$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/cpp cpp-bin /usr/bin/cpp-4.4 100
$ update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/cpp cpp-bin /usr/bin/cpp-4.6 50

Verify that it has worked:

gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../src/configure -v --with-pkgversion='Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.6-11ubuntu2' --with-bugurl=file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.4/README.Bugs --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,obj-c++ --prefix=/usr --program-suffix=-4.4 --enable-shared --enable-linker-build-id --with-system-zlib --libexecdir=/usr/lib --without-included-gettext --enable-threads=posix --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.4 --libdir=/usr/lib --enable-nls --with-sysroot=/ --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-libstdcxx-debug --enable-objc-gc --disable-werror --with-arch-32=i686 --with-tune=generic --enable-checking=release --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-linux-gnu
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.4.6 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.6-11ubuntu2)

Done!

Related posts (automagically generated):

  1. Building Android 4.0 on Ubuntu 11.10
  2. Creating Debian packages for Linux kernels >= 3.0.0 in Ubuntu
  3. Compiling custom kernels for the Huawei U8150
  4. Building CyanogenMod 7 for the Huawei U8150

4 thoughts on “Ubuntu GCC > 4.4.x considered harmful!”

  1. Based on your post content, your title: “4.4.x considered harmful!” is not accurate.

    1. At the time I wrote it it was accurate. 🙂

      But I did put an update at the top explaining that the issues were gone in later versions…

  2. I’m using Linux Mint 13 (based on ubuntu 12.04). The default gcc&g++ version in the software repo is 4.6.
    Problems occured when I tried to compile mysql 5.5.29. I tried the commands in this post, installed gcc&g++ 4.4, and modified the priority. And the problems were gone.
    Thank you for this helpful post!

    1. Awesome, glad it helped. I haven’t used Ubuntu now for ~1 year so it’s interesting to hear that their compiler still has some weird issues (my issue was the stability of the generated code).

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