Apologies if this was answered many moons ago when the decision was made (my searching skills failed me), but why were the GCC 4.1 builds dropped? Was there a technical issue/limitation, or was it “only” an administrative annoyance?

After a long hiatus in building our tech in/for Houdini, we recently discovered to our horror that building plugins using GCC4.1 works, but they crash when actually used (in the GCC4.4-built Houdini 13.5).

Cheers!

- Rob

rjpieke
Apologies if this was answered many moons ago when the decision was made (my searching skills failed me), but why were the GCC 4.1 builds dropped? Was there a technical issue/limitation, or was it “only” an administrative annoyance?

After a long hiatus in building our tech in/for Houdini, we recently discovered to our horror that building plugins using GCC4.1 works, but they crash when actually used (in the GCC4.4-built Houdini 13.5).

A mix of both. gcc 4.1 is basically broken, especially when it comes to vector math and templates, both of which we rely on heavily. Coupled with the fact that the number of studios unable to run the gcc 4.4 or higher builds was getting smaller by the day, it's demise was inevitable.

That said, our gcc 4.4. builds are done on a machine that comes pre-installed with gcc 4.1, so there shouldn't be any libc issues (which was the biggest concern, for studios still stuck on gcc 4.1 platforms).

What kind of crashes are you running into?

Hi Halfdan

What kind of crashes are you running into?

For example, a SOP operator will crash on the first call to a method from GU_Detail/GEO_Detail (like gdp->clearAndDestroy() or GU_PrimPoly::build(gdp, 3, GU_POLY_CLOSED) ).

On the other hand I can build the field3dtools plugin (the one shipped with the houdini toolkit) using gcc4.1.2 and I'm able to load field3d file (using the file node).

So if you are able to build a SOP operator using gcc4.1 let me know !

Cheers,

Guillaume Laforge

To add a touch more detail to Guillaume's post, we tried the simple star SOP example. Built fine, crashed when used.

v2n
On the other hand I can build the field3dtools plugin (the one shipped with the houdini toolkit) using gcc4.1.2 and I'm able to load field3d file (using the file node).

After a brief discussion with the gang, turns out that my information is slightly off (although gcc 4.1 is still crap). Apparently building with gcc 4.1 and running in gcc 4.4 Houdini will not work reliably.

However, what will work, is to install gcc 4.4, on a gcc 4.1 system, and build with that. The resulting code will still run on gcc 4.1 systems (e.g. CentOS 5), without gcc 4.4 present.

Any chance you want to (or don't want to but still can) start building with GCC 4.1 again?

We have a rather massive codebase built in 4.1 which we'd rather not rebuild using 4.4+ just yet.

rjpieke
Any chance you want to (or don't want to but still can) start building with GCC 4.1 again?

We have a rather massive codebase built in 4.1 which we'd rather not rebuild using 4.4+ just yet.

This is unlikely to happen, unfortunately. We've made too many code changes that are incompatible with gcc 4.1, which would be a lot of work to revert back on. Plus, we'd have to figure out all new bugs again.

Isn't everyone jumping on the VFX Reference Platform bandwagon anyway?

halfdan
Isn't everyone jumping on the VFX Reference Platform bandwagon anyway?

Indeed we are.

VFX Platform CY2014 (Current)
gcc 4.1.2

*ahem*

rjpieke

halfdan
Isn't everyone jumping on the VFX Reference Platform bandwagon anyway?

Indeed we are.

VFX Platform CY2014 (Current)
gcc 4.1.2

*ahem*

Ah, well. We got most of it