How To Install GCC on CentOS 7

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GCC on CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, GCC is a collection of compilers for various programming languages, with its primary focus being the C and C++ compilers. It is an open-source project maintained by the GNU Project and is widely used in the Linux ecosystem. GCC plays a crucial role in software development by converting human-readable source code into machine-executable binary files.

The history of GCC dates back to the 1980s when it was initially developed by Richard Stallman as part of the GNU Project. Over the years, GCC has evolved to support multiple architectures, languages, and optimization techniques, making it a powerful and versatile tool for developers.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step install GCC Compiler on the CentOS 7 server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• Basic knowledge of the command-line interface will be beneficial for executing commands.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install GCC on CentOS 7

Step 1. Update Your System.

Before proceeding with the installation of GCC, it’s essential to ensure that your CentOS 7 system is up-to-date. You can update your system by running the following command:

yum clean all
yum -y update

Step 2. Installing GCC on CentOS 7.

• Method 1 Install GCC from the repository:

GCC can be easily installed from the official CentOS repositories. Run the following command to install GCC:

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

After the installation completes, check the version of GCC to ensure it was installed correctly:

gcc --version

This command will display the installed version of GCC, which should look similar to:

gcc (GCC) 13.1.0 20230623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-44)
Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

• Method 2 Install GCC from source:

First, download the tarball of the GCC version you want to install:

wget https://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/sourceware.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-14.1.0/gcc-14.1.0.tar.gz

Unpack the tar archive and change the current directory:

tar zxf gcc-14.1.0.tar.gz
cd gcc-14.1.0

Install bzip2 and run the ‘download_prerequisites’ script to download some prerequisites needed:

yum -y install bzip2
./contrib/download_prerequisites

Next, start configuring the GCC build environment:

./configure --disable-multilib --enable-languages=c,c++

Once it is completed, run the following command to compile the source code:

make -j 4
make install

You can check if GCC is properly installed:

gcc --version

You should see the newly built GCC version.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed GCC. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the GCC compiler on CentOS 7 systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official GCC website.