GCCcore vs GCC

[boegel]

There's quite a bit of confusion w.r.t. GCCcore (which only provides the actual GCC compilers) vs GCC (which bundles GCC and binutils)...

The GCCcore concept was first introduced end of 2015 (cfr. easybuilders/easybuild-framework#1451 and #2214) to serve as a base for different toolchains, including foss and intel.

It's mostly relevant when using a hierarchical module naming scheme, but also allows us to have a single easyconfig file for stuff like CMake that can resolve a dependency for things installed with toolchains using the GCC or Intel compilers (which require a GCC underneath).

Since the naming is quite confusing, maybe we need to rethink this a bit, so that GCC can be used as a subtoolchain.

One potential option is to install the GCC+binutils bundle under the GCC name by using the support in the Bundle easyblock for installing different "components" in a single module, see easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks#980 (which is used to build the X11 bundle of packages).

Thoughts @ocaisa, @damianam, @geimer, @jhein32, @verdurin?

[smoors]

I'm in favor of bundling GCC and binutils into the GCC easyconfig and removing GCCcore.
having both puts unnecessary burden on deciding which one to choose.
you have to assess whether the software is performance critical or not, which is not always clear and may depend on the use case.
Unless having binutils installed causes problems with the Intel compilers of course.

[akesandgren]

GCCcore is required as it's part of the intel toolchain, GCC can't be part of that. There's some comment on that in the framework I think.

easybuild-framework/easybuild/toolchains/iccifort.py
# use GCCcore as subtoolchain rather than GCC, since two 'real' compiler-only toolchains don't mix well,
# in particular in a hierarchical module naming scheme