[Python-Dev] [C++-sig] GCC version compatibility

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Christoph Ludwig wrote:
> If I understood Dave Abraham's reply somewhere above in this thread correctly
> then you can build different C++ extension modules with different C++
> compilers on ELF/Linux. (I don't have the time right now to actually try it,
> sorry.) There is no need to fix the C++ compiler as soon as python is built.

There is, somewhat: how do you know the name of the C++ compiler?

> If distutils builds C++ extensions with the C compiler then I consider this a
> bug in distutils because it is unlikely to work. (Unless the compiler can
> figure out from the source file suffixes in the compilation step *and* some
> info in the object files in the linking step that it is supposed to act like a
> C++ compiler. None of the compilers I am familiar with does the latter.)
> distutils should rather look for a C++ compiler in the PATH or explicitly ask
> the user to specify the command that calls the C++ compiler.

How should it do that? The logic is quite involved, and currently,
distutils relies on configure to figure it out. If you think this should
be changed, please contribute a patch.

> (distutils does not behave correctly when building C++ extensions anyway. It
> calls the C compiler to compile the C++ source files and passes options that
> gcc accepts only in C mode. The compiler version I am using is docile and only
> issues warnings. But these warnings are unnecessary and and I would not blame
> gcc if the next compiler release refused to compile C++ sources if the command
> line contains C specific options. But the distutils mailing list is a better
> place to bring this eventually up, I guess.)

The best way to "bring this up" is to contribute a patch. "Bringing it
up" in the sense of sending an email message to some mailing list likely
has no effect whatsoever.

Regards,
Martin