Compile emacs from feature/native-comp (gccemacs) branch on Ubuntu

Question

I want to compile the gccemacs branch of Emacs. When I run ./configure, the configure script errors with:

cd emacs
git checkout feature/native-comp
./autogen.sh 
./configure --with-nativecomp 

configure: error: Installed libgccjit has failed passing the smoke test.
You can verify it yourself compiling:
<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/jit/intro/tutorial01.html>.
Please report the issue to your distribution.
Here instructions on how to compile and install libgccjit from source:
<https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/JIT>.

Here's some version info:

$ cd emacs/ 
$ git log -1
  commit 2593bbee51f4d15d3a4fc1d4e2e3b215222f783a (HEAD -> feature/native-comp, origin/feature/native-comp)
  Author: Andrea Corallo <akrl@sdf.org>
  Date:   Sat Jul 4 15:53:15 2020 +0100
  
      * Relax constant folding rules
      
      * lisp/emacs-lisp/comp.el (comp-function-optimizable-p): No need to
      check for operands or result to be fixnums.

$ uname -r
5.4.0-7634-generic

$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2) 9.3.0

I can verify that gccjit fails by compiling https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/jit/intro/tutorial01.html. It segfaults. Here's a gdb trace:

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff7566d63 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
(gdb) where
#0  0x00007ffff7566d63 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#1  0x00007ffff7566e85 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#2  0x00007ffff678b2a1 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#3  0x00007ffff678d8d1 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#4  0x00007ffff678e9dd in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#5  0x00007ffff678ea68 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#6  0x00007ffff678d32b in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#7  0x00007ffff6784851 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#8  0x00007ffff67775b6 in gcc_jit_context_compile () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgccjit.so.0
#9  0x00005555555555a5 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffda38) at hello.c:99
(gdb) list
62  
63    gcc_jit_block *block = gcc_jit_function_new_block (func, NULL);
64  
65    gcc_jit_block_add_eval (
66      block, NULL,
67      gcc_jit_context_new_call (ctxt,
68                                NULL,
69                                printf_func,
70                                2, args));
71    gcc_jit_block_end_with_void_return (block, NULL);

My suspicion is that I need a more recent version of GCC, since the Dockerfile for gccemacs installs gcc from source in the demo Dockerfile: https://gitlab.com/koral/emacs-nativecomp-dockerfile/-/blob/master/Dockerfile

This may help: "Build gccemacs on MacOS catalina with gcc 10 installed by homebrew" https://gist.github.com/AllenDang/f019593e65572a8e0aefc96058a2d23e — Peter Becich, Jan 04 '21 at 07:48
For any future readers, the original `feature/native-comp` branch was merged, and therefore is deprecated (and deleted upstream). If using git, checkout either `emacs-28` (or a release branch for any later version), or else use the unstable `master` branch (if you want to be on the bleeding edge). Not using git, you can build from the tarball for any release (or pretest or release candidate) for Emacs 28 or later. — phils, Mar 21 '22 at 01:27

score 27 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 11 '22 at 13:55

I could get it to work with Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04. This is the recipe I used.

sudo apt install libxpm-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libtiff-dev libx11-dev libncurses5-dev automake autoconf texinfo libgtk2.0-dev
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/ppa
sudo apt install gcc-10 g++-10 libgccjit0 libgccjit-10-dev libjansson4 libjansson-dev
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git && cd emacs
git checkout emacs-28
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-10 CXX=/usr/bin/gcc-10
./autogen.sh 
./configure --with-nativecomp --with-json CFLAGS="-O3 -mtune=native -march=native -fomit-frame-pointer"
make -j$(nproc)

UPDATE: 11/03/21: I have updated the flags passed to configure. Other things are the same.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/ppa
sudo apt install gcc-10 g++-10 libgccjit0 libgccjit-10-dev libjansson4 libjansson-dev
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git && cd emacs
git checkout emacs-28
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-10 CXX=/usr/bin/gcc-10
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-cairo --with-modules --without-compress-install --with-x-toolkit=no --with-gnutls --without-gconf --without-xwidgets --without-toolkit-scroll-bars --without-xaw3d --without-gsettings --with-mailutils --with-native-compilation --with-json --with-harfbuzz --with-imagemagick --with-jpeg --with-png --with-rsvg --with-tiff --with-wide-int --with-xft --with-xml2 --with-xpm CFLAGS="-O3 -mtune=native -march=native -fomit-frame-pointer" prefix=/usr/local
make -j$(nproc)

The key part of this answer is `sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/ppa`; the default repositories contain a broken version of `libgccjit` that causes the smoke test to fail. — Clément, Sep 28 '20 at 16:48
Flag `NATIVE_FULL_AOT=1` is to build for all available distributions. In 99% of scenarios this is redundant. — Navidot, Dec 16 '20 at 19:29
NATIVE_FULL_AOT is to build for _all the Emacs distribution _ ... it's not plural. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GccEmacs#h5o-13 (I read this comment as distrubitons like macos, windows, linux)... — joefromct, May 27 '21 at 02:59
For everyone reading this now: `native-comp` was merged, so you can skip `feature/native-comp` and instead just build off master (or emacs-28 whenever that shows up.) — Aleksandar Dimitrov, Aug 03 '21 at 13:20
also note that the flag for ./configure is `--with-native-compilation` — McBear Holden, Apr 29 '22 at 22:13

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '22 at 20:42

Ubuntu 20.04 WSL works just fine now with default ppas.

# emacs-native
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git && cd emacs
git checkout emacs-28        
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-10 CXX=/usr/bin/gcc-10
./autogen.sh
cd ..
mkdir emacs-build
cd emacs-build
sudo apt install libxpm-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev libgnutls28-dev
../emacs/configure --prefix=/usr --with-native-compilation --with-json CFLAGS="-O3 -mtune=native -march=native -fomit-frame-pointer" --without-makeinfo
make -j24
sudo checkinstall

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 09 '20 at 13:52

4

In my case, I'm in debian stable with the version 8.3.0 and had no trouble installing it, maybe you can try to downgrade gcc and install libgccjit-8-dev.

Good luck!

answered Jul 09 '20 at 13:52

Fermin MF

635
3
8

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 06 '22 at 21:57

3

As of 2022 using Ubuntu 20.04 with its standard gcc 9.4.0 allows compiling Emacs with native compilation support, as long as the appropriate libgccjit is installed:

sudo apt install libgccjit0 libgccjit-9-dev

answered Apr 06 '22 at 21:57

holocronweaver

1,319
10
22

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 06 '20 at 05:43

On Fedora 32 (almost latest update as of 5 Sept 2020), I got the same error. But strangely, libgccjit was not installed. I installed it and the corresponding -devel package - and the compilation worked nicely.

If anyone gets here searching for this error - check if you have libgccjit installed at all.

dnf install libgccjit-devel.x86_64 libgccjit.x86_64

Compile emacs from feature/native-comp (gccemacs) branch on Ubuntu

5 Answers5