./configure cannot find GCC but whereis is able to?

Question

I have the minimal install from CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1708.iso running in VirtualBox.

Due to an Apache HTTPD dependency issue, I am trying to configure pcre via:

./configure --prefix /usr/local/pcre/8.41

but I end up with:

configure: error: You need a C++ compiler for C++ support.

I find GCC/CPP/CC via

whereis gcc
whereis cpp
whereis cc

and, respectively, receive:

cc: /usr/bin/cc

cpp: /usr/bin/cpp /usr/lib/cpp /usr/share/man/man1/cpp.1.gz

gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/libexec/gcc /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz

yum install gcc reports:

...

Package gcc-4.8.5-16.el7_4.1.x86_64 already installed and latest version

Nothing to do

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I am quite green in regards to administering Linux from scratch but I am trying really hard to learn how to install Apache/PHP via make since yum's latest PHP is 5.4.

Answer 1

On systems using the GCC suite of compilers, the C++ compiler is g++ (cpp is the C preprocessor).

A common name to find a C++ compiler under is c++. This is often a symbolic link to an appropriate C++ compiler such as g++ or clang++ or whatever the installed system compiler is (if it is installed).

The error message from the configure script indicates that there is no C++ compiler installed on your system. On your Linux, the C++ compiler is installed separately from the C compiler.

To install the GCC C++ compiler on CentOS:

yum install gcc-c++