Can't seem to install 64bit GCC with YUM

Question

I type the following...

$ yum install gcc.x86_64

(by the way, is "gcc.x86_64" the right package for 64bit gcc?)

[...] I get the following errors... [...]

Total size: 16 M
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
ERROR with rpm_check_debug vs depsolve:
libstdc++-devel is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
libstdc++-devel is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
libstdc++ is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
libstdc++ is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
libstdc++ is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
libstdc++ is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
gcc is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
gcc is needed by (installed) gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386
Complete!
(1, [u'Please report this error in https://bugzilla.redhat.com  
/enter_bug.cgi?product=Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux%205&component=yum'])

Answer 1

You'll need to remove the i386 builds of GCC to install the x86_64 builds. I'm not sure why you have the i386 build of GCC installed on a 64-bit OS -- it just messes things up. (In this case, the platform refers to the platform it is compiled to run on, not the platform it compiles for.)

You need to remove gcc-c++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386 and replace it with the corresponding x86_64 package. You can either do it in one yum transaction or remove all dependent packages and then let yum reinstall them based of the correct gcc and gcc-c++ packages.

You will need the i386 (or i686) package of libgcc as well as the x86_64 one. You need the libgcc for the target platform since it gets linked into the binaries gcc produces.