Migrate Velox build to use minimum GCC-13

[majetideepak]

Velox recently added support for C++20 #10814
However, the current GCC-12.* that is used has minimal support for most C++ 20 features.
Example: std::format is not supported. See #14458

Cudf 25.10 also needs support for std::format, std::span, std::variant which come with GCC-13.

The proposal is to make GCC-13 as the minimum and update the corresponding CentOS and Ubuntu versions.

[majetideepak]

CC: @pedroerp, @kgpai, @czentgr, @assignUser, @karthikeyann, @MBkkt

[kgpai]

With regards to forward compatibilty Fedora already supports gcc 14 (https://github.com/facebookincubator/velox/blob/main/scripts/setup-fedora.sh#L96) and we build against it, so this should be fine. With regards to backwards compatibility unless we have any customer who objects, lets go for it.

[kgpai]

Another thing to consider is that I am not too sure if all our dependencies compile as is with GCC 14 (some dependencies are unfortunately not so upto date). I believe on Fedora majority of the deps are system dependencies and not bundled so this wasnt a problem, but we should be sure that the minimum supported compiler works under all cases.

[zhouyuan]

@czentgr @kgpai Thanks for checking. In the community Gluten/Velox CI and nightly releases are built with GCC-11 for now. We've found that many Gluten deployments run on older operating systems, even end of life OS like CentOS-7 and Ubuntu-20.04. To guarantee glibc compatibility across these environments, we've chosen GCC-11 + CentOS-7 as our foundational build platform, and do static linking with VCPKg. This approach ensures the native libraries meet minimal glibc requirements.

From a library's perspective, it's generally best to be cautious with compiler upgrades; for instance, Arrow still targets GCC-9 (C++17)[3] and similar as Duckdb[4]. Please take these examples into consideration. If an upgrade is ultimately required, I propose to use the most minimal GCC version possible.

Thanks, -yuan

[1] https://github.com/apache/incubator-gluten/blob/main/dev/ci-velox-buildstatic-centos-7-enhanced-features.sh#L20
[2] https://github.com/apache/incubator-gluten/blob/main/.github/workflows/velox_nightly.yml#L55
[3] https://arrow.apache.org/docs/developers/cpp/building.html#system-setup
[4] https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/dev/building/overview#prerequisites

[assignUser]

There was some movement to switch to 20 in Arrow but that hasn't materialized due to some blockers but I think 20 is fine to use in 2025.

I really don't think supporting VERY eol systems like Centos 7 is tenable/compatible with the goal of using and producing modern code. You can't have it both ways and use bleeding edge software but also not spent any effort on keeping moving with the world...

[MBkkt]

@zhouyuan It's possible to install new gcc in old environment.

To guarantee glibc compatibility across these environments, we've chosen GCC-11 + CentOS-7 as our foundational build platform, and do static linking with VCPKg. This approach ensures the native libraries meet minimal glibc requirements.

Also consider using static linking with libc and build from source, because otherwise it's still possible issues with using this binary in other version of OS.
But I understand it's not easy, so just wanted to mention this.

[zhouyuan]

@assignUser While Gluten is a key downstream user of Velox, I'd like to share two cents of its current usage within our community. Cent7 is chose because of the various deployments and GCC-11 is the most recent version which can be easily installed on it. I think there is a similar consideration for python packages release with manylinux2014 (CentOS 7 based, glibc 2.17).
Velox maintainers will make the ultimate decision. It's important to highlight that there are no version tags for Velox, toolchain adjustments for downstream projects may take some time.

Cc: @PHILO-HE @rui-mo

[pedroerp]

@zhouyuan thanks for flagging this. Seems like centos 7 is end of life since 2024, which means per my understanding you aren't getting even security updates anymore.

Do you have a sense on how long it will take to migrate Gluten CI (and potential other users you mentioned) to a newer version?

[zhouyuan]

@pedroerp
Gluten is building Velox native libraries on CentOS 7 using GCC 11. All Velox and dependency libs are up-to-date and built from source, avoiding system library dependencies and the associated security concerns.

We've determined that installing GCC 13 from source is the most viable path forward, and we plan to make the image ready next week and migrate CI to it if Velox GCC upgrade happens

[pedroerp]

Thank you @zhouyuan

Cc: @majetideepak @assignUser @czentgr @kgpai