Toolchain Requirements for Linux

[MikeGitb]

I wanted to extend the build matrix for Linux on Travis CI, and was wondering what toolchains / to versions cinder aims to support.

For example, the cmake files claim to require only cmake 2.8, Ubuntu 14.04 however comes with 2.8.12, so 2.8 seems overly restrictive. The Travis-CI images come with preinstalled 3.9, and the dependency script installs 3.2.
The situation with the compilers is similarly unclear. Is gcc supposed to be supported at all? Which version?

[lucasvickers]

If I recall correctly, the dependency versions were pulled from our wiki, which at the time (and likely still is) the defacto support standard.

We have discussed that we should come up w/ a proper support matrix of linux tooling which would directly correlate with CI. The challenge is that we are pretty ham-strung by OS versions natively available in Travis. Since Travis is geared towards web-dev, their recommended method for testing other OS flavors is to use containers. I investigated this a bit but wound up with compilation errors that were out of the ordinary.

Based on recent experience, I would love to move to an agent based solution such as buildkite, but this would require having dedicated machines.

So I know none of this helps you, but hopefully it sheds some light on it.

[andrewfb]

We don't have an official baseline for Linux compilers, but it does seem like Ubuntu 14.04 would be appropriate, and consequently GCC 4.8.2 would a nice target. I haven't attempted that recently enough to say with certainty we're still building there however.

[richardeakin]

Regarding cmake min version: #1877

[MikeGitb]

@richard:
Thanks for the Link. I just remembered that Ubuntu 14.04 has an official cmake 3.5 package: https://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/devel/cmake3

Also, as I said, the "normal" cmake version is 2.8.12 instead of 2.8, which added some new features, in particular target_compile_options.

[andrewfb]

If 2.8.12 adds features over 2.8 that we'd benefit from, I imagine we can bump this. Ubuntu 14.04 is what's driving the baseline for us, both on gcc and CMake. Thanks for taking a look at this.

[MikeGitb]

target_compile_options is already used but I guess as no-one is using cmake <2.8.12 this wasn't a problem.

In any case, my original goal was to understand which configuration should be supported and hence should be part of the ci checks. However, I didn't find a way to downgrade the cmake version on the travis images so that's a moot point.

Anyway,

• here is a PR updating the required cmake version to 2.8.12: [cmake] fix required cmake version to 2.8.12 #1970
• and here is a PR updating the build matrix - including a build that uses the default compiler on trusty (g++4.8): Extend CI matrix for ubuntu #1969

[MikeGitb]

@andrewfb:

Ubuntu 14.04 is what's driving the baseline for us

Now that ubuntu18.04.1 is about to be released, have you considered raising this to ubuntu 16.04, which would mean cmake 3.5 and g++-5.

[richardeakin]

I think it hinges on the latest supported by travis CI and AWS.

[MikeGitb]

I see
FYI: while travis is using trusty, the default versions of cmake, g++ and clang are much newer than what you would find on a regular installation of 14.04.

[paulhoux]

Yesterday I tried compiling Cinder on Ubuntu, which wasn't as hard as I thought. You can say I am curious about Linux and Cinder development, not so much for Android but more as a stable platform for installations.

I followed these directions, but I had to make the following changes to make it work:

• On a clean Ubuntu installation, CMAKE nor CLION were able to find the default compiler. I fixed this by doing sudo apt-get install build-essentials.
• The list of dependencies needs an update. When used as-is, it complained about libraries being obsolete. I followed the recommendations and replace the -bad ones with proper ones.

I haven't been able to compile and run a sample yet, but Cinder compiled successfully.

EDIT: I used GCC instead of Clang, because sudo apt-get install clang did not work for me

[MikeGitb]

@paulhoux: Interesting. What version of ubuntu was that? And what does

sudo apt-get install clang did not work for me

mean?

[paulhoux]

Not sure what version of Ubuntu it was. I downloaded the stand-alone installer, so I could run Ubuntu from a USB drive. If you can tell me where I can find the version, I'll let you know.

sudo apt-get install clang wasn't able to find the package. Adding a version like clang-3.3 didn't change that. Nor did it help to add LLVM repositories, as explained here.