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 <[email protected]>
  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

Answer 1

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)

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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!

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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