Compiling minetest on CentOS 7

HOW TO: The default gcc version of CentOS 7.3.1611 is gcc 4.8.5.  Minetest 0.4.16 requires a minimum of gcc 4.9 to compile.

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Minetest is probably one of the best Open Source games of all times.  The project website is https://www.minetest.net/

While minetest can be compiled on many different OS'es, its easier on some than on others...  I found it easiest to compile on Fedora - all the libraries are readily available and the compilers are cutting edge.

This post doesn't go into resolving dependencies, rather it is a step-by-step document describing compiling minetest with an appropriate compiler.  The default gcc version of CentOS 7.3.1611 is gcc 4.8.5.  Minetest 0.4.16 requires a minimum of gcc 4.9 to compile:

Regarding dependencies, I think there are enough articles on the net that describe how to get what you need.  I will say this however: The third party repos that I normally use on CentOS are: Epel and RPMFusion.  Once these two are installed, getting the required dependencies is as easy as running either: yum search or yum provides */

COMPILING MINETEST:

Attempting to run cmake on the minetest project, renders:

"Insufficient gcc version, found 4.8.5.  Version 4.9 or higher is required. "

So, here is what we do in CentOS 7:

- Install the Software Collections "devtoolset-6"
- Provide CMAKE with the devtoolset compiler locations

Installing the "software collections" repositories,

# yum install centos-release-scl*

Enable the collection repository that we need:

# yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms

Install SCL devtoolset-6 to get a newer version of GCC and G++.  

# yum install devtoolset-6

Go into your minetest build folder and enable the toolset's version of bash:

# scl enable devtoolset-6 bash

Unfortunately, since cmake is not included in the toolsets, we need to tell the base one where to find the right compilers, otherwise it tries to use the system's default.

The only method that I found which worked, was:

$ CXX=/opt/rh/devtoolset-6/root/usr/bin/g++ CC=/opt/rh/devtoolset-6/root/usr/bin/gcc cmake . -DRUN_IN_PLACE=TRUE ...

Now, you can exit the devtoolset-6 bash shell and compile normally.  Cmake generated all the necessary information to use the correct compilers regardless of your environment:

$ exit

$ make -j <# cpus>

Happy compiling!

P.S. Remember that when you run scl enable devtoolset-6 bash, you are in a new bash session with