Writing C++11 concurrency code on Linux Mint with gcc 4.7.2

I’ve written some C++11 concurrency code in VS2012 with the November CTP and wanted to test if it would also run on Linux compiled with gcc – hence the effort to upgrade my laptop over the last couple of days. The upgrade worked fine – I’m quite impressed with Linux Mint and with CodeBlocks. Unfortunately, gcc 4.7.2 has left me disappointed.

Firstly, I tried to compile my whole concurrency project – I was expecting a few minor tweaks (gcc was stricter on how I declare my template functions), then I hit this Internal Compiler Error:

Concurrency.cpp:156:1: internal compiler error: in get_expr_operands, at tree-ssa-operands.c:1035

Apparently, this bug has been fixed but not yet released – it’s due to calling a member function from a lambda in a templated class. So I thought I’d cut my code down, eliminate the lambdas and focus on std::thread and std::condition_variable. Still no joy, this time the program aborted:

In fact, it seems this is a long standing issue. And the code to provoke it is hardly pushing the boundaries of threading:

void sayHelloWorld()
{
    std::cout << "Hello World\n";
}

int main()
{
    std::thread talk( sayHelloWorld );
    talk.join();
    return 0; 
}

Looking on the bright side, gcc 4.8 should be along soon and I’m sure the support for std::thread and lambdas will be working by then. In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out with VS2012 Nov CTP.