Interesting configure options

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Here are some of the non-obvious options to libstdc++'s configure. Keep in mind that they all have opposite forms as well (enable/disable and with/without). The defaults are for current development sources.

The canonical way to find out the configure options that are available for a given set of libstdc++ sources is to go to the source directory and then type: ./configure --help

--enable-multilib [default]

This is part of the generic multilib support for building cross compilers. As such, targets like "powerpc-elf" will have libstdc++ built many different ways: "-msoft-float" and not, etc. A different libstdc++ will be built for each of the different multilib versions. This option is on by default.

--enable-debug

The configure script will automatically detect the highest level of optimization that the compiler in use can use (certain versions of g++ will ICE if given the -O2 option, but this is fixed in later versions of the compiler). This --enable flag will disable all optimizations and instruct the compiler to emit as much extra debugging information as it can, for use inside GDB. Note this make command, executed in the build directory, will do much the same thing, without the configuration difference:make CXXFLAGS='-g -O0' all

--enable-cstdio

This is an abbreviated form of '--enable-cstdio=stdio' (described next).

--enable-cstdio=LIB

Select a target-specific I/O package. As of libstdc++-v3 snapshot 2.91, the choices are 'libio' to specify the GNU I/O package (from glibc, the GNU C library), or 'stdio' to use a generic "C" abstraction. The default is 'stdio'. A longer explanation is here.

--enable-sjlj-exceptions

Forces old, set-jump/long-jump exception handling model. If at all possible, the new, frame unwinding exception handling routines should be used instead, as they significantly reduce both runtime memory usage and executable size.

--enable-clocale

This is an abbreviated form of '--enable-clocale=generic' (described next).

--enable-clocale=MODEL

Select a target-specific underlying locale package. The choices are 'ieee_1003.1' to specify an X/Open, Standard Unix (IEEE Std. 1003.1-200x) model based on langinfo/iconv/catgets, 'gnu' to specify a model based on functionality from the GNU C library (langinfo/iconv/gettext) (from glibc, the GNU C library), or 'generic' to use a generic "C" abstraction which consists of "C" locale info. The default is 'generic'.

--enable-c99

The "long long" type was introduced in C99, along with many other functions for wide characters, and math classification macros, etc. If enabled, all C99 functions not specified by the C++ standard will be put into namespace __gnu_cxx, and then all these names will be injected into namespace std, so that C99 functions can be used "as if" they were in the C++ standard (as they will eventually be in some future revision of the standard, without a doubt). By default, C99 support is on, assuming the configure probes find all the necessary functions and bits necessary.

--enable-long-long

The "long long" type was introduced in C99. It is provided as a GNU extension to C++98 in g++. This flag builds support for "long long" into the library (specialized templates and the like for iostreams). This option is on by default: if enabled, users will have to either use the new-style "C" headers by default (i.e., <cmath> not <math.h>) or add appropriate compile-time flags to all compile lines to allow "C" visibility of this feature (on GNU/Linux, the flag is -D_ISOC99_SOURCE, which is added automatically via CPLUSPLUS_CPP_SPEC's addition of _GNU_SOURCE).

--enable-cheaders=OPTION

This allows the user to define what kind of C headers are used. Options are: c, c_std, and c_shadow. These correspond to the source directory's include/c, include/c_std, and include/c_shadow directories. The default is c_std.

--enable-threads

This is an abbreviated form of '--enable-threads=yes' (described next).

--enable-threads=LIB

Select a threading library. As of libstdc++-v3 snapshot 2.91, the choices are: 'yes' for some kind of default (hmmmmm); 'decosf1', 'irix', 'mach', 'os2', 'posix'/'pthreads' (same thing), 'solaris', 'win32', 'dce', or 'vxworks' to select the corresponding interface; and 'single', 'no', or 'none' for the null-case, single-threaded library.

All of this is currently undergoing a lot of changes. As of 2.91, 'single' and 'posix' are the only implemented models. Default is single.

--enable-version-specific-runtime-libs

Specify that run-time libraries should be installed in the compiler-specific subdirectory (i.e., ${libdir}/gcc-lib/${target_alias}/${gcc_version}) instead of ${libdir}. This option is useful if you intend to use several versions of gcc in parallel. In addition, libstdc++'s include files will be installed in ${libdir}/gcc-lib/${target_alias}/${gcc_version}/include/g++, unless you also specify --with-gxx-include-dir=dirname during configuration.

--with-gxx-include-dir=<include-files dir>

Adds support for named libstdc++ include directory. For instance, the following puts all the libstdc++ headers into a directory called "2.97-20001008" instead of the usual "g++-v3".

   --with-gxx-include-dir=/foo/H-x86-gcc-3-c-gxx-inc/include/2.97-20001008

--enable-cxx-flags=FLAGS

With this option, you can pass a string of -f (functionality) flags to the compiler to use when building libstdc++. FLAGS is a quoted string of options, like

  --enable-cxx-flags='-fvtable-gc -fomit-frame-pointer -ansi'

Note that the flags don't necessarily have to all be -f flags, as shown, but usually those are the ones that will make sense for experimentation and configure-time overriding.

The advantage of --enable-cxx-flags over setting CXXFLAGS in the 'make' environment is that, if files are automatically rebuilt, the same flags will be used when compiling those files as well, so that everything matches.

Fun flags to try might include combinations of

  -fstrict-aliasing
  -fno-exceptions
  -ffunction-sections
  -fvtable-gc

and opposite forms (-fno-) of the same. Tell us (the libstdc++ mailing list) if you discover more!

--enable-c-mbchar [default]

Certain template specializations are required for wide character conversion support. This is tricky and currently changing rapidly, and can cause problems on new platforms. Disabling wide character specializations is useful for initial porting steps, but builds only a subset of what is required by ISO. By default, this option is on.

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