cuda - Caffe compilation fails due to unsupported gcc compiler version

Question

I struggle with Caffe compilation. Unfortunately I failed to compile it.

Steps I followed:

git clone https://github.com/BVLC/caffe.git
cd caffe
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make all

Running make all fails with the following error message:

[  2%] Building NVCC (Device) object src/caffe/CMakeFiles/cuda_compile.dir/util/cuda_compile_generated_im2col.cu.o
In file included from /usr/include/cuda_runtime.h:59:0,
                 from <command-line>:0:
/usr/include/host_config.h:82:2: error: #error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc 4.9 and up are not supported!
 #error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc 4.9 and up are not supported!
  ^
CMake Error at cuda_compile_generated_im2col.cu.o.cmake:207 (message):
  Error generating /mydir/caffe/build/src/caffe/CMakeFiles/cuda_compile.dir/util/./cuda_compile_generated_im2col.cu.o

Software version:

• OS: Debian.
• gcc version: 5.3.1.
• nvcc version: 6.5.12.
• cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version result:

NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  352.63  Sat Nov  7 21:25:42 PST 2015
GCC version:  gcc version 4.8.5 (Debian 4.8.5-3) 

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Attempts to solve the problem

1st try

Simple solutions are often best ones, so (as suggested here) I tried to comment out macro checking gcc version from /usr/include/host_config.h (line 82). Unfortunately it doesn't work and compilation fails badly:

1 catastrophic error detected in the compilation of "/tmp/tmpxft_000069c2_00000000-4_im2col.cpp4.ii".

2nd try

I tried to run:

cmake -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-4.8 ..
make

but it fails with exactly the same error message (even though g++-4.8 should be accepted).

3rd try

I've found similar problem (though not related to Caffe) and I tried to solve it as suggested in the accepted answer.

What I did:

1. I've ran grep -iR "find_package(CUDA" caffe command and found Cuda.cmake file which has find_package(CUDA 5.5 QUIET) in line 225.
2. I added set(CUDA_HOST_COMPILER /usr/bin/gcc-4.8) to Cuda.cmake, line before line: find_package(CUDA 5.5 QUIET).
3. I removed everything from build directory and ran cmake and make again - with and without -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-4.8.

Unfortunately result is exactly the same. Caffe probably overwrites it somehow - I didn't figure it out how.

make VERBOSE=1 2>&1 | grep -i compiler-bindir returns nothing.

What's interesting, make VERBOSE=1 prints command that fails, which is:

/usr/bin/nvcc -M -D__CUDACC__ /mydir/caffe/src/caffe/util/im2col.cu -o /mydir/caffe/build/src/caffe/CMakeFiles/cuda_compile.dir/util/cuda_compile_generated_im2col.cu.o.NVCC-depend -ccbin /usr/bin/cc -m64 -DUSE_LMDB -DUSE_LEVELDB -DUSE_OPENCV -DWITH_PYTHON_LAYER -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE -Xcompiler ,"-fPIC","-Wall","-Wno-sign-compare","-Wno-uninitialized","-O3","-DNDEBUG" -gencode arch=compute_20,code=sm_21 -Xcudafe --diag_suppress=cc_clobber_ignored -Xcudafe --diag_suppress=integer_sign_change -Xcudafe --diag_suppress=useless_using_declaration -Xcudafe --diag_suppress=set_but_not_used -Xcompiler -fPIC -DNVCC -I/usr/include -I/mydir/caffe/src -I/usr/include -I/mydir/caffe/build/include -I/usr/include/hdf5/serial -I/usr/include/opencv -I/usr/include/atlas -I/usr/include/python2.7 -I/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/core/include -I/mydir/caffe/include -I/mydir/caffe/build

when I add --compiler-bindir /usr/bin/gcc-4.8 flag manually, it prints error:

nvcc fatal   : redefinition of argument 'compiler-bindir'

which may be related to this bug report.

Edit: I didn't notice that --compiler-bindir and -ccbin are the same options, and the latter is already set in above command that failed. When I changed -ccbin /usr/bin/cc to -ccbin /usr/bin/gcc-4.8 in above command that failed, it completes successfully. Now I need to find option in Caffe's CMake file that overwrite -ccbin in all subsequent Caffe's CMakes. Looking at cmake/Cuda.cmake:252:list(APPEND CUDA_NVCC_FLAGS ${NVCC_FLAGS_EXTRA} seems to be good way to go.

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How can I successfully complete my compilation? Any help is appreciated.

Related SO questions:

• host_config.h:unsupported GNU version! gcc versions later than 4.9 are not supported.
• CUDA 6.5 complains about not supporting gcc 4.9 - what to do?.

Answer 1

cmake -D CUDA_NVCC_FLAGS="-ccbin gcc-4.8" .. && make causes successful compilation.

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Now another problem showed up: linking Google's libgflags or libprotobuf fails probably due to fact that it was compiled with newer gcc version but it's not related to asked question.