Installing gcc without root privilege in CentOS

Sometimes one may find the version of the default gcc on CentOS might be out of date. However, without root privelige, the installation of the gcc will be painful.

Main Steps

First, you need to download the source from a gcc mirror. For instance, you can go here and choose a gcc version whatever you like. I would recommend gcc-7.4.0 (released 2018-12-06) since it supoorts most common C++ standards. After donwloading the source, unpack it, and cd into the directory where your version of gcc was unpacked. Then, enter the following commands. You might have to replace all instances of gcc-7.4.0 with your gcc version. Also, this script will install gcc in your ~/software directory. If you want it installed somewhere else, change the prefix option accordingly. The whole step may take around 4 hours but you can allow multiprocessing in the building steps to shorten the duration.

$ cd $HOME # pwd: ~
# You can create a directory for managing installed softwares
$ mkdir software
# Replace all instances of gcc-7.4.0 with your own gcc version
$ wget http://www.netgull.com/gcc/releases/gcc-7.4.0/gcc-7.4.0.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf gcc-7.4.0.tar.gz
$ cd gcc-7.4.0 # pwd: ~/gcc-7.4.0

If you do not have all the prerequisites packages and libraries on your system or you are not sure about it, GCC can help you download and install them through download_prerequisites.

$ ./contrib/download_prerequisites 

After download all the prerequisites we can head to the configuration step.

$ cd ../software # pwd: ~/software
# Create the install directory
$ mkdir gcc7
$ cd ../gcc7 # pwd: ~/software/gcc7
# Create a directory to store temporary files created in configuration
$ mkdir gcctemp
$ cd gcctemp # pwd: ~/software/gcc7/gcctemp
# Have to unset library path temporarily to install new gcc
$ unset LIBRARY_PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Configuration
$ ../configure --prefix=$HOME/software/gcc-7.4.0 --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,go --disable-multilib

The --prefix parameters specifies the installation path. The --disable-multilib parameter will disable building 32-bit support on 64-bit systems. The --enable-languages parameter identifies which languages to build. You can modify this command to remove undesired language. Potential languages you can choose to build or to remove are c, c++, fortran, go, objc(Objective-C) and obj-c++(Objective-C++). Usually we only need c,c++,fortran,go these four.

Once the configuration is complete we can go to the building and installing step. The make command could take around 3 hours, but you can use the parameter -j[n] to allow multiprocessing. With -j60 it will take less than half hour.

# Use the parameter -j[n] to allow multiprocessing
$ make -j60
$ make install

Optionally you can create a direcrtory to store the resource file.

$ cd $HOME # pwd: ~
$ mkdir resource
$ mv gcc-7.4.0 ~/resource/

After make and make install you need to set the enviornment in your .bashrc file.

$ vi ~/.bashrc

Add following lines into your .bashrc file with the insert mode of your vim editor:

$ export PATH=$HOME/software/gcc-7.4.0/bin:$PATH
# If your server has a 32-bit system or 
# you do not add the --disable-multilib parameter in the previous step 
# you might need to adjust the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH to $GCC_PATH/lib instead of $GCC_PATH/lib64
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/software/gcc-7.4.0/lib64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Save and exit your .bashrc file. Do following commands to check if your gcc is successfully installed.

$ source ~/.bashrc
$ g++ --version

If it is successfully installed it should print following message:

g++ (GCC) 7.4.0
Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Now gcc and g++ are successfully installed on your own server.

Troubleshooting

1. Sometimes if you do make or make install in gcc download directory directly may cause error, so a better way is to create a new folder called gcctemp, and do the congfiguration, building and installation step in this temporary folder.
2. Remember to unset LIBRARY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH before configuration, or it will raise LIBRARY_PATH shouldn't contain the current directory when building gcc ERROR.
3. In the configuration step, if you want to refer your root path in --prefix parameter you should use $HOME instead of ~, or it will cause error.
4. If you are installing gcc on a 64-bit system remember to add –disable-multilib flag, or it will cause error.
5. You need to add fortran in your --enable-languages parameter if you want to install R in the future, or it will cause error.
6. For the -j[n] parameter in the make step, do not let n greater than the processor number you have in your system, or it may cause erorr. You can use lscpu command to check how many processors you have in your system.