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Accessing Required Software

For grading purposes, we will grade your code using the GCC C++ compiler. The valgrind tool is also useful for checking if your code has memory leaks. This document has instructions for installing the compiler (usually invoked by g++) and valgrind. Since we use C++20 features, we need a relatively new version of g++: 10 or above.

While you can use other compilers like Clang (the default on Mac), behavior and command line arguments may differ slightly from what we do in the notes and in class.

Using SEAS servers

You can also use the SEAS server for access to a Unix command line. g++ version 10.4.0 is installed and can be run with g++-10. valgrind is also available. Instructions for remotely accessing the server are here. You can also use one of the Linux labs.

Linux

If you are on linux, install valgrind and g++ version 10 or above through your package manager. Depending on how it is installed, it might have to be run as g++-10 (or whatever version you installed). Be sure to test the version you installed using g++ --version (or g++-10 --version).

Windows

While you can install GCC natively on Windows, a far easier solution is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which gives you a Linux environment directly on Windows. Installation instructions are here. The easiest choice is the Ubuntu Linux distribution, where then you can then follow the Linux instructions above. Specifically, you can first run sudo apt update then run sudo apt install valgrind and sudo apt install g++-10 to install those two tools.

Mac

valgrind is not supported on newer versions of macOS. To use valgrind, you should use the SEAS servers or install a Linux virtual machine. There is also an unofficial port of valgrind that you can install using Homebrew, but I cannot guarantee that it works.

By default, g++ on a Mac defaults to clang++. To install the real GCC compiler, the easiest way is to use Homebrew. After installing Homebrew, running brew install gcc should install GCC version 12. Then you should be able to run the C++ compiler using g++-12. Note that if you have an M1 Mac, only GCC 12 will work since previous versions do not support the M1 architecture.