Hello everyone
I want to install the ldc2 compiler on a specific machine i586:

~ $ strings /lib/libc.so.6 | grep GLIBC
GLIBC_2.0
GLIBC_2.1
GLIBC_2.1.1
GLIBC_2.1.2
GLIBC_2.1.3
GLIBC_2.2
GLIBC_2.2.1
GLIBC_2.2.2
GLIBC_2.2.3
GLIBC_2.2.4
GLIBC_2.2.6
GLIBC_2.3
GLIBC_2.3.2
GLIBC_2.3.3
GLIBC_2.3.4
GLIBC_2.4
GLIBC_2.5
GLIBC_2.6
GLIBC_2.7
GLIBC_2.8
GLIBC_2.9
GLIBC_2.10
GLIBC_2.11
GLIBC_2.12
GLIBC_2.13
GLIBC_2.14
GLIBC_2.15
GLIBC_2.16
GLIBC_2.17
GLIBC_2.18
GLIBC_2.22
GLIBC_2.23
GLIBC_PRIVATE

I'm trying to install dmd with my hands in order to build ldc2 from the sources, but I can't:

~ $ dmd --version
dmd: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by dmd)

Please tell me which version for the current configuration I can use?

On Tuesday, 19 July 2022 at 15:28:44 UTC, Alexander Zhirov wrote:

I need to build a compiler under x32 in order to compile a program for the same machine.

dmd2/src/dmd# make -f posix.mak
posix.mak:42: ===== DEPRECATION NOTICE =====
posix.mak:43: ===== DEPRECATION: posix.mak is deprecated. Please use src/build.d instead.
posix.mak:44: ==============================
dmd -of../generated/build -g build.d
dmd: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by dmd)
posix.mak:111: recipe for target '../generated/build' failed
make: *** [../generated/build] Error 1

On Tuesday, 19 July 2022 at 15:33:59 UTC, Alexander Zhirov wrote:

dmd2/src/dmd# make -f posix.mak
posix.mak:42: ===== DEPRECATION NOTICE =====
posix.mak:43: ===== DEPRECATION: posix.mak is deprecated. Please use src/build.d instead.
posix.mak:44: ==============================
dmd -of../generated/build -g build.d
dmd: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by dmd)
posix.mak:111: recipe for target '../generated/build' failed
make: *** [../generated/build] Error 1

You can find the release archive linked from https://dlang.org/download.html , after clicking 'Download' by dmd. It's at http://downloads.dlang.org/

You can then go through old versions and, by trial, find one that's old enough to work on your machine, which you can then use to a newer dmd:

for x in dmd druntime phobos; do git clone https://github.com/dlang/$x; done
export HOST_DMD=path/to/bin32/dmd
( cd dmd; make -f posix.mak ) # etc.

Finding an old version that works on your machine will be very easy, but for example the random 2016 build that I grabbed was also too old to build dmd master, so you want to prefer a newer build that still works. It's not necessary to build dmd master though: in the worst case, you should be able check out interim releases (look at 'git tag --list', then 'git checkout v2.094.0' for example), build those, then used them to build a newer release.

This is all of course a massive PITA, which any extremely nice person could make less of a pain by cataloguing useful versions on the D wiki or by providing their own "good enough to compile master" builds for old architectures. Another option is to get newer glibc onto this system (not installing it, just making it available for dmd. use LD_LIBRARY_PATH).

An option that's technically possible but probably even more of a pain than what I've just described is using another machine to cross-compile static 32-bit D binaries that will then work on this machine. I've tried this and run into pretty unpleasant limitations, but I have a guide anyway at https://d.minimaltype.com/index.cgi/wiki?name=statically-linked+binaries , which you can supplement with https://wiki.dlang.org/Cross-compiling_with_LDC to get a 32-bit result. For that matter 'ldc2 -mtriple i686-linux-musl file.d' might be made to work, but I've no idea how to supply the toolchains that it expects.

Speaking of toolchains, it might be possible to use a modern server with a modern dmd with an ancient glibc: https://www.lordaro.co.uk/posts/2018-08-26-compiling-glibc.html

On Tuesday, 19 July 2022 at 23:19:28 UTC, jfondren wrote:

Thanks for your thorough presentation.

On older systems the dynamic loader (ld.so) may not execute the binary under the new glibc with the error message "ELF file OS ABI invalid". This is due to the addition of two features to the toolchain (STB_GNU_UNIQUE, STT_GNU_IFUNC) eleven years ago [0] an application programmer usually does not have to deal with.

In this case one needs to start dmd using the loader which accompanies the new glibc. In order to avoid that I use patchelf to set INTERP and RUNPATH on all binaries in linux/bin64 accordingly.

Since glibc is not forward compatible [1] I wonder why the dmd tools are not routinely linked against a long established glibc version.

[0] https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/binutils/2011-04/msg00107.html
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11107263/how-compatible-are-different-versions-of-glibc

On Tuesday, 19 July 2022 at 23:19:28 UTC, jfondren wrote:

Yes, you were right! I managed to launch the 2020 version. Now I'm trying to build ldc2. I will report on the successes a little later. Thanks!

On Thursday, 21 July 2022 at 05:44:41 UTC, Alexander Zhirov wrote:

Result:

I downloaded and unpacked the binary version of the dmd compiler version 2.097.2, which runs without problems with my glibc set.

Then I compiled the GCC compiler version 9.5.0 from the source code:

wget https://ftp.mpi-inf.mpg.de/mirrors/gnu/mirror/gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-9.5.0/gcc-9.5.0.tar.gz
mkdir build-gcc && cd build-gcc
../gcc-9.5.0/configure --prefix=$PWD/../install-gcc --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-languages=c,c++
make -j16
make install

Then I built LLVM using this compiler, according to the instructions on the LDC website:

export CC=/root/source/gcc/gcc-install/bin/gcc
export CXX=/root/source/gcc/gcc-install/bin/g++
mkdir build-llvm && cd build-llvm
cmake ../llvm-10.0.1.src -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$PWD/../install-llvm -DLLVM_BINUTILS_INCDIR=/usr/include -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD='X86' -DCOMPILER_RT_INCLUDE_TESTS=OFF -DLLVM_INCLUDE_TESTS=OFF
make -j16
make install

And then I built the ldc compiler myself, also according to the instructions on the website:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc.git
mkdir build-ldc && cd build-ldc
cmake ../ldc -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$PWD/../install-ldc -DLLVM_ROOT_DIR=<PATH_TO_LLVM_INSTALL> -DD_COMPILER=<PATH_TO_DMD_COMPILER_X32>
make -j16
make install

As a result, I built the ldc compiler for my x32 machine:

# ldc2 --version
LDC - the LLVM D compiler (1.30.0):
  based on DMD v2.100.1 and LLVM 10.0.1
  built with DMD32 D Compiler v2.097.2
  Default target: i686-pc-linux-gnu
  Host CPU: broadwell
  http://dlang.org - http://wiki.dlang.org/LDC

  Registered Targets:
    x86    - 32-bit X86: Pentium-Pro and above
    x86-64 - 64-bit X86: EM64T and AMD64

I hope my guide will be useful to someone who will face the same task. Thank you for your help!

I don't know if this helps but i have to do,
export CC=/usr/local/bin/gcc
with ldc2.
I don't know why it works with gcc but not with llvm/clang.