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/