Steps for compiling COBS on server with old GCC/C++/C compiler

[shenwei356]

I spent two hours finguring out how to compile cobs on our server (CentOS 7.9 with gcc 4.8.5) using conda. May this helps.

1. Create conda env and install new gcc/cc/c++ compilers

    # conda env remove -n cobs
   
    conda create -n cobs cmake
   
    conda activate cobs
   
    # mamba is faster for installing packages
    conda install -y mamba
    
    mamba install -c conda-forge -y gcc_impl_linux-64 c-compiler cxx-compiler zlib
   

2. Link binaries and some libs

    # gcc binary
    cd /home/shenwei/app/miniconda3/envs/cobs/bin; 
    ln -s ../libexec/gcc/x86_64-conda-linux-gnu/9.3.0/gcc
    
    # cobs uses old boost version which relies on libboost_**-mt.a
    cd /home/shenwei/app/miniconda3/envs/cobs/lib
    ln -s libboost_system.a libboost_system-mt.a
    ln -s libboost_filesystem.a libboost_filesystem-mt.a
   

3. Edit envinronment, add few lines to ~/.bashrc.

    # vim ~/.bashrc
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$app/miniconda3/envs/cobs/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$app/miniconda3/envs/cobs/include
    export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=$app/miniconda3/envs/cobs/include
   

4. Reactivate envonment

    conda deactivate
    
    conda activate cobs    
   

5. Compile cobs

    git clone --recursive https://github.com/bingmann/cobs.git
    mkdir cobs/build
    cd cobs/build
    cmake ..
    make -j4
    
    # copy binary to somewhere in $PATH
    cp src/cobs ~/bin/