Compilers

We will need compilers for C++, C, and Fortran. These should be fairly recent, as we require support for recent language standards in most of the recipes. CMake offers very good support for many compilers, from both commercial and non-commercial vendors. To keep the recipes consistently cross-platform and as operating system independent as possible, we have worked with open source compilers:

• On GNU/Linux, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is the obvious choice. It is free and available for all distributions. For example, on Ubuntu, you can install the compilers as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install g++ gcc gfortran 

• Clang, in the LLVM family, is also a good choice for C++ and C:

$ sudo apt-get install clang clang++ gfortran

• On macOS, the LLVM compilers shipped with XCode will work for C++ and C. We have used the Fortran compiler from GCC in our macOS testing. This has to be installed separately, using the package manager. For example, the command for Homebrew is as follows:

$ brew install gcc

• On Windows, you can use Visual Studio for the C++ and C recipes. Alternatively, you can use the MSYS2 installer and install the entire toolchain, including a C++, C, and Fortran compiler, with the following single command in an MSYS2 environment (for the 64-bit version):

$ pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain