Getting a Modern Host C++ Toolchain
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-This section mostly applies to Linux and BSDs. On Mac OS X, you should have
-a sufficiently modern Xcode, or you will likely need to upgrade until you do.
-On Windows, just use Visual Studio 2012 as the host compiler, it is explicitly
-supported and widely available.
+This section mostly applies to Linux and older BSDs. On Mac OS X, you should
+have a sufficiently modern Xcode, or you will likely need to upgrade until you
+do. On Windows, just use Visual Studio 2012 as the host compiler, it is
+explicitly supported and widely available. FreeBSD 10.0 and newer have a modern
+Clang as the system compiler.
-However, on Linux and BSDs there are some notable distributions which have
+However, some Linux distributions and some other or older BSDs sometimes have
extremely old versions of GCC. These steps attempt to help you upgrade you
compiler even on such a system. However, if at all possible, we encourage you
to use a recent version of a distribution with a modern system compiler that
distribution on which users have struggled with the version requirements is
Ubuntu Precise, 12.04 LTS. For this distribution, one easy option is to install
the `toolchain testing PPA
-<https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain-r/+archive/test>` and use it to
+<https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain-r/+archive/test>`__ and use it to
install a modern GCC. There is a really nice discussions of this on the `ask
ubuntu stack exchange
-<http://askubuntu.com/questions/271388/how-to-install-gcc-4-8-in-ubuntu-12-04-from-the-terminal>`.
+<http://askubuntu.com/questions/271388/how-to-install-gcc-4-8-in-ubuntu-12-04-from-the-terminal>`__.
However, not all users can use PPAs and there are many other distros, so it may
be necessory (or just useful, if you're here you *are* doing compiler
development after all) to build and install GCC from source. It is also quite
make install
For more details, check out the `excellent GCC wiki entry
-<http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC>`, where I got most of this information
+<http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/InstallingGCC>`__, where I got most of this information
from.
Once you have a GCC toolchain, use it as your host compiler. Things should