[m-users.] Mercury packages on Debian 8 (jessie)

[Paul Bone]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 01:05:42AM +1300, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> Does this mean GCC 4,8 exactly, or 4.8 or later?

Hi ROK.

4.8 exactly.  This version of Mercury wasn't compatible (for faster grades)
with newer GCCs.  It'll work on older GCCs but since the compiler name
"gcc-4.8" gets hard-coded into the Mercury configuration the binary packages
must depend on exactly the compiler name that was used to build them.

> I'm using Ubuntu 18, and the GCC version is 7.3.0-3ubuntu2.1.
> Clang is 6.0-41~exp5~ubuntu1 and
> pgcc is pgcc 18.10-1 64-bit target on x86-64 Linux -tp gh
> Should I expect any difficulty building Mercury with these?

Your GCC should be compatible, it's the same as mine.  I'm not sure about
clang, I just havn't tested it.

Keep in mind I'm talking specifically about Mercury packaged for Debian:

http://dl.mercurylang.org/deb/

With Ubuntu 18 your options are:

 + Build from source.
 + Use the mercury packages on that page.  That'll give you Mercury 14.04.1
   but with slower grades (it uses the reg grades not asm_fast grades).
 + Use the mercury-rotd packages on that page.  That'll give you a snapshot
   from November 14th last year, everything should work.

I'm quite pleased with the Mercury packages, and I'm using them myself on
Linux Mint 19 (derrived from Ubuntu 18), so I'd recommend installing either
mercury-recommended or mercury-rotd-recommended.  And it's much quicker than
building from source!  These'll use your default gcc compiler.


-- 
Paul Bone
http://paul.bone.id.au