I haven't thought about ifort, so what I wrote doesn't apply here. In general, it's common to use a different system to prepare binaries; the overhead isn't that bad. For example, Python wheels (binaries installed with pip) are often built in Docker images that are maintained for this purpose here: https://github.com/pypa/manylinux Currently the most common Linux wheel version seems to be manylinux2014 (a.k.a manylinux_2_17), which is built on CentOS 7 with devtoolset-10.
Marcin On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 8:30 PM Kay Diederichs <kay.diederi...@uni-konstanz.de> wrote: > > Dear Marcin, > > thanks for getting back! > > The problem is that we want to use not only newer compilers, but also a > newer Linux distribution for development and compilation. > > In my experience, CentOS 7 is showing its age. No Chrome updates, no > ifort/ifx updates, no security updates, so not useful for our everyday > workstation usage. GCC-13 can indeed be used but the binaries are often > slower than those compiled with ifort. > > This is why we would like to upgrade our own workstations to e.g. > Alma8/Rocky8/RHEL8 . Not being able to do this (because some users are > stuck with CentOS7) means we need a CentOS7 VM for compilation only: > that entails more administration, time, duplication of data, ... Our > time would be better spent on improving the code. > > Best wishes, > Kay > > Am 26.03.25 um 19:58 schrieb Marcin Wojdyr: > > Dear Kay, > > > > do you use devtoolset (Red Hat Developer Toolset)? It's a set of > > relatively new tools and compilers, up to GCC 12, for RHEL7. It might > > be the best solution unless you need GCC 13+. > > > > Marcin > > > > On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 6:18 PM Kay Diederichs > > <kay.diederi...@uni-konstanz.de> wrote: > >> > >> Dear all, > >> > >> when compiling XDS or any other software distributed as binaries, the > >> question comes up whether it will be compatible with the users' operating > >> system. > >> For Linux, the main stumbling point is the GLIBC version: a binary > >> compiled on a relatively new distribution (like Redhat Enterprise Linux 9 > >> or Ubuntu 22.04) will not work on older distributions (like Redhat > >> Enterprise Linux 8 or 7, or Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04) because it needs > >> "symbols" from the newer GLIBC library. > >> Whereas users with single or a few machines can typically upgrade with > >> reasonable effort to newer distributions (e.g. from Ubuntu 20 to 22 or > >> 24), some sites with many machines (e.g. synchrotrons) may be stuck with > >> old Linux distributions, assuming/hoping that these do not pose security > >> risks due to strict firewalls or other measures. > >> Therefore, developers tend to use machines with old distributions when > >> preparing their binaries for public consumption. The downside of this is > >> that new compilers and their features are often not available for these > >> old distributions. > >> > >> Since for XDS development we want to use new compiler versions, my > >> question is: is there any site still using Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 (or > >> the equivalent CentOS7) or Debian 9 or Ubuntu 18? Those sites that have > >> not upgraded their machines are at risk not being able to use XDS in the > >> future. Please get in touch with me. > >> > >> Any site with Redhat-8-compatible distribution or Ubuntu 20 or Debian 10 > >> (or specifically, GLIBC 2.28 and newer) should be good for now. > >> > >> Thank you, > >> Kay > >> > >> ######################################################################## > >> > >> To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: > >> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 > >> > >> This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing > >> list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at > >> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ > > -- > Kay Diederichs http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de > email: kay.diederi...@uni-konstanz.de Tel +49 7531 88 4049 > Fachbereich Biologie, Universität Konstanz, Box M647, D-78457 Konstanz > > This e-mail is digitally signed. If your e-mail client does not have the > necessary capabilities, just ignore the attached signature "smime.p7s". > ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/
