Using <bits/extc++.h> Header File on MacOS (Example with VSCode)

Introduction

To conclude first, it’s difficult to use the <bits/extc++.h> header file with Clang as the compiler, as it will generate various mysterious errors. This article adopts the method of installing GCC via Homebrew and using GCC as the compiler.

I originally wanted to try pbds while doing CSES problem set, but I found it completely unusable. There seems to be no solution on the internet, so after some research, this article was born.

Install Homebrew (if not already installed)

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install GCC

Here you can choose to install different versions of GCC, but note that Macs with Arm architecture (M series chips) only support GCC version 11 and above.

# Install the latest version of GCC
brew install gcc

# Install GCC 11
brew install gcc@11

Use GCC Compiler

If you don’t know the installed GCC version, you can use the following command to check:

ls /usr/local/bin/gcc*  # Intel Mac
ls /opt/homebrew/bin/gcc*  # Apple Silicon Mac

Once you’ve confirmed the exact version number of GCC (for example, gcc-11), you can use that version of GCC to compile your code. For example, if the GCC version is 11, run:

g++-11 example.cpp -o Example

# If you want to compile with a specific version of C++ (for example, C++11), you can run
g++-11 example.cpp -o example -std=c++11

Use GCC in VSCode

Use C/C++ Compile Run Extension

Go to the extension settings page, search for C-cpp-compile-run: Cpp-compiler, and set it to use gcc for compilation.

Use Competitive Programming Helper (cph) Extension

Go to the extension settings page, search for cph.language.cpp.Command, and set it to use gcc for compilation.

Conclusion

Now you can use the <bits/extc++.h> header file on MacOS. You can try whether the following code runs correctly:

#include <bits/extc++.h>

using namespace __gnu_pbds;
using namespace std;

int main() {
    tree<int, null_type, less<int>, rb_tree_tag, tree_order_statistics_node_update> s;
    s.insert(1);
    s.insert(3);
    cout << *s.find_by_order(1) << '\n'; // Outputs the second element (3)
    return 0;
}

If you have any questions about using GCC and the <bits/extc++.h> header file on MacOS, feel free to discuss in the comments below.