Question

I wonder how to install a stable latest gcc (4.4.x) for a workstation under Kubuntu 9.04?

The reason I need gcc 4.4.x is that I would like to use Collapse in OpenMP 3.0 which is only supported in GCC 4.4 and later version. Stability is important to me since I would like to make it work on a workstation shared by many people at work. But I have seen so many reports about the failure to install a stable gcc 4.4.x in the past few months. For example, I saw this somewhere online:

sudo apt-get install gcc-snapshot

which I found out at gcc snapshot website is not a stable one.

So I wonder if there is some way that can install a stable latest gcc (4.4.x) for a workstation under Kubuntu 9.04? Even gcc 4.4.0 is fine as long as it is stable and I assume it to have OpenMP 3.0. Or should I wait till a stable release of gcc 4.4.x on Kubuntu 9.04 is out? Really appreciate your suggestion!

Thanks and regards!

Answer 1

To get newer packages in Ubuntu, I usually try a couple of -unfortunately unsafe – solutions

1. Try to install the package from the next Ubuntu version(from http://packages.ubuntu.com/), this may not work if the package depends on a certain version of a library, this usually looks like the safest solution but I don’t think it’ll work for GCC.
2. Search for a PPA that provides those packages, for GCC 4.4 I can see 3 PPAs, check in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcc-4.4 below Other versions of ‘gcc-4.4’ in untrusted archives.
3. Compile from source, I don’t think that’s suitable in the case of GCC.

Note that by trying any of those you risk breaking your system, usually it’s safe to try any of them for trivial apps such as d4x or pidgin, but for GCC, which depends on libstdc++ and several other libraries, there’s a considerable risk.