Wrong version of gcc being used

gcc

I've recently been having problems with compiling packages for R. I'm not sure of the causes but one possibility is that there are a couple of different versions of gcc on my MacBook Pro. When I type which gcc in a terminal window it returns /usr/bin/gcc. But when I type gcc –version I get back

Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.62)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin19.5.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin

I may also have some issues with the path. It is currently set to

/usr/local/sbin:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/Library/TeX/texbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Library/Apple/usr/bin:/usr/local/git/bin

I added the Applications… path to PATH hoping it would help but it didn't. /usr/bin contains both a g++ and gcc file install May 18, so very recently. I've tried renaming those as a test of whether that would solve the problem but I'm unable to do that even as sudo.

Suggestions greatly appreciated!

Best Answer

For macOS Clang is a more preferred option (Apple stopped shipping gcc with Xcode and replaced it with Clang and the last version of GCC they supported was 4.2.1, it'll overall be more intuitive.). I'd remove GCC and do the following:

Installation of Clang

Run brew update and then brew upgrade in terminal
Run brew install llvm to install LLVM and Clang

To put Clang within your PATH variables:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

I'm not too sure how different the two are when it comes to compiling (although they are probably very similar.) you can proceed with this link to catch up on the commands you'll need to use instead.

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MacOS – Which version of gcc is on Mountain Lion

Mountain Lion doesn't ship with any GCC, but you can install GCC 4.7 . I have done this on my machine.

Homebrew: how to switch between GCC versions `gcc49` and `gcc`

You can’t, those are different formulae, and Homebrew doesn’t allow you to install a previous version of a formula.

The workaround is to remove gcc, then go back in Homebrew’s history (remember that it’s a Git repository), get the gcc formula as it was before the 5.1.0 upgrade, install it, then upgrade gcc to get the latest version.

The 5.1.0 gcc upgrade was done in Homebrew commit 9cf3d4da1148c0a0d2f42c2fbe75f9a557339bab:

$ cd $(brew --prefix)
$ git show -s 9cf3d4da1148c0a0d2f42c2fbe75f9a557339bab
commit 9cf3d4da1148c0a0d2f42c2fbe75f9a557339bab
Author: David Christenson <david@the-david.com>
Date:   Sat May 2 18:58:17 2015 -0600

    gcc 5.1.0

    Update to latest stable release, add option and patch for JIT, remove CLooG dependency,
    refactor language selection, add HEAD, use HTTPS mirror.

You need to checkout the parent commit:

$ git checkout 9cf3d4da1148c0a0d2f42c2fbe75f9a557339bab^

Then get the gcc formula and save it somewhere:

$ brew cat gcc > /tmp/gcc.rb

If you’re lazy I put this formula online here. You can now go Back to the Future:

$ git checkout master

Be sure you removed the current gcc:

$ brew rm gcc

Now install the 4.9 version, either from your local copy:

$ brew install /tmp/gcc.rb

Or from my online copy:

$ brew install https://gist.githubusercontent.com/bfontaine/eacd18e2c413005a7526/raw/320a73fc6e1bbf0009a08e6bd90e9d32c3409007/gcc.rb

You should now have a working GCC 4.9 install. Now, upgrade to get the 5.2:

$ brew upgrade gcc

Done.

$ brew ls --versions gcc
gcc 4.9.2_1 5.2.0

Best Answer

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