I am trying to build a gcc cross compiler. I understand that before compiling the cross compiler I need to have the target binutils built already. why the building of the compiler need the target binutils ? the compiler alone only takes high level code and turn it to the assembly that I defined it in the compiler sources. so why do I need the target bintools for compiling the cross compiler ? It is written in all of the cross compiler documentation that I need them to be build before compiling the cross compiler. (e.g. http://wiki.osdev.org/Building_GCC and http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~nakazato/tips/xgcc.html).
GCC needs an assembler to transform the assembly it generates into object files (machine code), and a linker to link object files together to produce executables and shared libraries. It also needs an archiver to produce static libraries/archives.
Those three are usually provided by the binutils package (among other useful tools): the GNU assembler as, linker ld and the ar archiver.
Your key question seems to be:
why the building of the compiler need the target binutils ?
As described in Building a cross compiler, part of the build process for a GNU cross-compiler is to build runtime libraries for the target using the newly-compiled cross-compiler. So the binutils for the target need to be present for that step to succeed.
It may be possible to build the cross-compiler first, using empty files for the subset of binutils components that gcc needs - such as as and ld and ar and ranlib - then build and install the target binutils components into the proper locations, then build the target runtime libraries.
But it would be less error-prone to do things the following way (and the documentation recommends this): build binutils for the target first, place the specified executables in gcc's source tree, then build the cross-compiler.
The binutils (binary utilities) provide low-level handling of
binary files, such as linking, assembling, and parsing ELF files. The GCC
compiler depends on these tools to create an executable, because it generates
object files that binutils assemble into an executable image.
ELF is the format that Linux uses for binary executable
files. The GCC compiler relies on binutils to provide much of the platform-specific functionality.
Here your are cross-compiling for some other architecture not for x86. So resulting binutils are platform-specific
while configuring has to give --host!=target. i.e --host=i686-pc-linux-gnu
where --target=arm-none-linux-gnueabi.
So resulting executable are not same which host already having binutils.
addition
the basic things needs to be known.
The build machine, where the toolchain is built.
The host machine, where the toolchain will be executed.
The target machine, where the binaries created by the
toolchain are executed.
So binutils will be having tools to generate and manipulate binaries
for a given CPU architecture. Not for the one host is using
Related
I am trying to cross compile for my raspberry pi, unfortunately the pi has an older version of libstdc++ than my build machine and when I try to run my executable it says "./<exe_name>: /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.26' not found (required by ./<exe_name>). I've gotten it working by using "-static", but really I'd like to be able to tell both ld (the gcc linker) and lld (the clang linker) "Only look in these paths for any libraries" it keeps finding the system one and linking against it. I've rsynced the raspberry pi's /usr/lib and /lib directores over to the host machine and I'd like to say "use /path_to_raspberry_pi_rsync/lib and /path_to_raspberry_pi_rsync/usr/lib" only.
Bonus points for getting ld and lld to tell me what path it's using when it tries to link.
I'd like to be able to tell both ld (the gcc linker) and lld (the clang linker) "Only look in these paths for any libraries"
Both will do that if you supply proper -L/path/to/target/libraries with sufficient contents.
it keeps finding the system one and linking against it. I've rsynced the raspberry pi's /usr/lib and /lib directores over to the host machine and I'd like to say "use /path_to_raspberry_pi_rsync/lib and /path_to_raspberry_pi_rsync/usr/lib" only.
Your problem most likely stems from the fact that what you rsynced are runtime libraries, not actual development libraries. So if e.g. /path_to_raspberry_pi_rsync/usr/lib contains libstdc++.so.6, but doesn't contain libstdc++.so symlink, then the linker will keep looking for libstdc++.so., until it finds one in the system directory.
In addition, once you succeed limiting your link to just the "rsync"d libraries, it is likely that your link will fail with unresolved libstdc++ symbols. That is because you need a matching set of headers and libraries.
Your best bet is to obtain a proper toolchain targeting your runtime environment.
Bonus points for getting ld and lld to tell me what path it's using when it tries to link.
With ld, you can add -Wl,-t flag and it will tell you about each and every library and object file it opens. lld may support this flag as well.
I'm trying to compile a single codebase for both ArmV8 aarch64 and aarch32 with GCC. My code requires the -mfloat-abi=hard flag and possibly others when compiled for aarch32, but not for aarch64.
I have multiple toolchains so I created two toolchain files.
What's the most idiomatic CMake way to add this flag only when the aarch32 toolchain file is used?
Of course I could do this inside the project CMakeLists.txt file, at the point where I already created the target and I'm setting other compiler flags.
But then I would have to add this flag conditionally depending on the toolchain, which seems to defeat the point of having two neatly separated toolchain files.
I need to use the GSL library in my program on LPCXpresso 4367(ARM CORTEX M4). I tried to follow the library linking procedure for LPC xpresso but the MCU linker is giving me these errors:
MCUXpressoIDE_10.3.0_2200\workspace\test1\Debug/../src/test1.c:53: undefined reference to 'gsl_linalg_LU_decomp'
MCUXpressoIDE_10.3.0_2200\workspace\test1\Debug/../src/test1.c:56: undefined reference to 'gsl_matrix_alloc'
MCUXpressoIDE_10.3.0_2200\workspace\test1\Debug/../src/test1.c:57: undefined reference to 'gsl_linalg_LU_invert'
and so on for other functions as well.
I have the libgsl.a and libgslcblas.a precompiled libraries for windows which works perfectly on codeblocks on windows with GCC compiler.
I read that I need to crosscompile library for the arm-none-eabi-gcc toolchain. But can someone please provide me the procedure as well?
the libgsl.a and libgslcblas.a precompiled libraries for windows
Those won't do for ARM.
In order to work on another platform, these libs need to be compiled from source code with the proper compiler (and settings - Cortex-M4F requires Thumb2 instruction set).
As the libraries are precompiled for Windows they don't work for ARM (as it is said in the other answer)
You need to cross compile the libraries first. If you install the GSL libraries following this procedure, you only need to change the parameters in the ./config according to your platform, for example I used:
./config --host=arm-linux-gnueabihf --prefix=/home/yourname/gsl_arm
Inside the .zip file with the gsl-2.5 files, there is a file called INSTALL. There you can find more details on the options for cross compiling.
Make sure to make clean before if you have already compiled the library for different settings. After cross-compiling the library when you run make check on the terminal you will probably get errors, but still it works. Continue with make install and you are ready to use it.
I have two binary files generated via 'objcopy -O binary' from respective ELF files. The ELF files are built with arm-none-linux-gnueabi toolchains; one is from linaro gcc 4.6.2 and other is from codesourcery gcc 4.6.3.
I load the binary files into memory via Uboot. While the one built with Linaro executes as expected the one built with codesourcery crashes (most probably as) there is no error on Uboot prompt but the program seems to hang.
Using 'arm-none-linux-gnueabi-readelf -S' from binutils of respective toolchains does not show much difference between files except for address offsets. Are there any tools/techniques that can help in this kind of situation before I attempt runtime debugging on target.
Thanks!
The difference turned out to be compiler option -munaligned-access. Code Sourcery toolchain enables this by default for ARMv6 and later architectures.
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/changes.html
Although this appeared in upstream gcc in 4.7 version, Code Sourcery had added this support earlier in their tool chain.
To figure this out I tracked the data abort exception and then compiled the culprit file with -save-temps options. Comparing intermediate .s file provided the hint.
What I can advice you is to compare default flags both compilers were built with:
/path/to/cross-compiler/bin/arm-*-*-gcc -Q -v
And preprocessor definitions:
/path/to/cross-compiler/bin/arm-*-*-gcc -dM -E - < /dev/null
The reason why your code compiled using Linaro GCC works is fact, that
it may have some options enabled by default, when CodeSourcery one
may have not.
Has someone infos how to build a llvm+clang toolchain using binutils and newlib and how to use it?
host: Linux, AMD64
target: cortex-m3, stm32
c-lib: newlib
assembler: gnu as
I created a firmware framework - PolyMCU https://github.com/labapart/polymcu - that is based on CMake that support GCC and LLVM. Because it is based on CMake you can build your firmware on Linux/Windows/MacOS.
It also uses Newlib - it looks all your requirements are there!
I also wrote a blog where I compared GCC and LLVM build size on ARM Cortex-M: http://labapart.com/blogs/3-the-importance-of-the-toolchain-version-in-embedded-space
Interesting results, Clang generated code is not much bigger than GCC on Cortex-M...
Unfortunately, right now clang does not support flexible cross-compilation settings. So, most probably you will need to invoke necessary tools with all necessary arguments.
Start with building llvm + clang using --target=thumbv7-eabi configure argument (note that you will need llvm + clang as of yesterday for this). You might want to specify --enable-targets=arm as well. This will instruct clang to generate code for thumb by default. After this you can invoke clang -mcpu=cortex-m3 to generate the code for you.
You will have to provide all necessary include / library paths by hands via -I / -L, etc.
If you're happy with some C++ hacking, you can write necessary "HostInfo", so it will invoke the right tools and provide right paths automagically.