OpenEye Platform Support - Technical Notes

Purpose of this document

OpenEye software is highly portable across a diverse set of hardware and software platforms, reflecting the diversity currently evident in the software industry. As a result the details may be of great consequence to specific platforms. While the OpenEye Platform Support document is intended to supply general guidelines and general though firm OpenEye commitments, this document provides many of the more technical and semantic details which affect compatibility and configuration issues in a specific instance.

Definition of "platform".

The OpenEye Platform Support document lists platforms as an operating system and processor type. This generality reflects the actual commitment of OpenEye and typically of customers. OpenEye will strive to support the current OS version and widely-used legacy versions.

Application vs. toolkit platforms: Compiler support

For products which are C++ toolkits, the compiler is an important aspect of the platform. Typically the compiler used by the customer must correspond precisely with the compiler used to build the toolkit. As with application platform support, the goals remain the same: to effectively support software users in a dependable way, balancing commercial and technical issues. But there are many details.

Similarly, toolkits wrapped for use with Python, Java, or other languages will require specificity in the installed development environment.

Due to the use of C++, and the lack or instability of a standardized C++ ABIs on many operating systems, versions of the toolkits are provided for different compilers, and even different compiler versions. Typically, toolkits are available for the system's native C++ compiler (including g++ 2.96 on RedHat 7.x), and also for the current GNU g++ version.

More explanation of tiers

The tiers should not be regarded as a measure of quality or seal of approval from OpenEye. As described, platforms are placed in tiers for a pragmatic combination of commercial and technical reasons. These lists do not reflect the many ideological biases and opinions held by OpenEye on platforms and everything else.

Platform-specific notes

Microsoft Windows (x86)

Windows 2000 and XP are supported. Software may run on other unsupported flavors of Windows.

OEChem and other OpenEye toolkits will not build with Microsoft Visual C/C++ prior to versions 7.1.

3rd Party compilers: OpenEye's toolkits may be used with Intel v7.1 and later compilers on top of Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 or later.

RedHat Linux (x86)

RedHat Linux 9.0 is supported. Note that in January 2007, v7.2 and v8.0 were discontinued. Note that in some cases software built on v9.0 may run on v8.0 and/or v7.2 (more likely for applications).

GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. Although RedHat 6.2 and RedHat 7.x both shipped with g++ 2.96, the 2.96s that come with RedHat 7.2 and later work fine, and those with RedHat 6.* do not. Reduce long link times by upgrading the GNU ld linker (binutils) to version 2.15.

3rd Party compilers: On x86 Linux, OpenEye's toolkits may be used with Intel icc v7.1 or later.

RedHat Linux Enterprise (x86)

RedHat Linux Enterprise 3.0 is supported. WS, ES, and AS editions of RedHat Linux Enterprise are binary compatible and hence all supported.

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended.

SGI IRIX (mips4)

SGI IRIX 6.5 is supported.

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. On mips-sgi-irix6.5, we had to configure GCC 3.4.3 with -disable-c-mbchar to work around IRIX portability problems with IRIX 6.5 prior to 6.5.19.

Native compiler: On MIPS IRIX, MIPSPro C/C++ v7.41 or later is recommended.

Apple MacOSX (G4,G5)

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended.

HP HP-UX (PA)

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. On hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.00, we recommend configuring GCC with the GNU assembler from GNU binutils 2.14 or later.

Native compiler: On HP PA-RISC HP-UX, we recommend at least the following patch levels of the HP C and C++ compilers:

cpp.ansi: HP92453-01 B.11.11.06 HP C Preprocessor (ANSI)
ccom: HP92453-01 B.11.11.28706.GP HP C Compiler
/usr/ccs/bin/ld: 92453-07 linker linker ld B.11.37 030909
aCC: HP ANSI C++ B3910B A.03.45

HP HP-UX (IA64)

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. On ia64-hp-hpux11.22, we recommend configuring GCC with the GNU assembler from GNU binutils 2.14 or later.

Native compiler: On IA-64 HP-UX, we recommend at least the following patch levels of the HP C and C++ compilers:

cc: HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.05.41 [Nov 1 2002]
aCC: HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.05.50 [May 15 2003]

HP Tru64 (alpha)

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended.

Native compiler: On HP/Compaq Tru64, v5.1 (Rev. 732), GCC 3.4.3 or Compaq C V6.4-215 (dtk) and Compaq C++ V6.5-014 is recommended.

IBM AIX (PPC)

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended.

Native compiler: On IBM AIX, Visual Age C/C++ (xlC) version 6.1 or later is recommended.

SGI RedHat Linux (IA64)
HP RedHat Linux (IA64)

GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. On ia64-unknown-linux-gnu, we recommend configuring GCC with both the GNU assembler and GNU linker from GNU binutils 2.14 or later.

Sun Solaris (SPARC)

Graphical applications may not be supported on this platform.

GCC: GCC 3.4.3 is recommended. When OpenEye toolkits are build with a GCC that isn't the system compiler on that system, the compiler is typically "configured" with the -disable-shared option, so that there are no dependencies on shared libraries, such as /usr/local/lib/libstdc++.so. Unfortunately, on a few platforms, such as Solaris 2.9 this isn't possible, as it would be impossible to use the resulting OpenEye toolkit in a shared library, if its built on top of a non-shared libstdc++. This may be fixed in future releases of GCC.

Native compiler: OpenEye toolkits are currently not compatible with Sun Forte compilers.

SuSE Linux (x86)
SuSE Linux (x86_64)

GCC 3.4.3 is recommended.

Reduce long link times by upgrading the GNU ld linker (binutils) to version 2.15.

Date: 02 Feb 2007