This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Maintainer Experience
In this article I will help you cross compile gcc in your Linux system. You need a cross-compiled GCC to compile code for multiple platforms from a single development host. I needed this to make my own Operating System from scratch. Dosen't matter what projects your cross compiling for the process is almost same. A note that this article only focuses in cross compiling on Linux systems. If you are on other systems like MacOS the process might be different.
Required Packages:
- build-essential
- bison
- flex
- libgmp3-dev
- libmpc-dev
- libmpfr-dev
- texinfo
- libisl-dev
You can install these by typing sudo apt install <package-name> if you use Ubuntu/Debian, sudo dnf install <package-name if you use Fedora or sudo pacman -Syu <package-name> if you use Arch Linux. This depends on your distro.
Cross-Compiling Process:
First you have to set some global variables:
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc
export LD=/usr/bin/gcc
export PREFIX="/usr/local/i386elfgcc"
export TARGET=i386-elf
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"
You can get the path of your gcc using which gcc. Then you can set it for CC and LD. PREFIX is where you want your cross-compiled files to be saved in. Target is your target architecture which is the architecture your cross-compiling for. I used x86 (i386) as an example.
Now you have to make a temporary directory to save your downloaded files:
mkdir /tmp/src
cd /tmp/src
Make the directory and CD into it.
Now, Finally you can start compiling:
curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-version.tar.gz
tar xf binutils-version.tar.gz
mkdir binutils-build
cd binutils-build
../binutils-version/configure --target=$TARGET --enable-interwork --enable-multilib --disable-nls --disable-werror --prefix=$PREFIX 2>&1 | tee configure.log
make all install 2>&1 | tee make.log
cd /tmp/src
curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-version/gcc-version.tar.gz
tar xf gcc-version.tar.gz
mkdir gcc-build
cd gcc-build
../gcc-version/configure --target=$TARGET --prefix="$PREFIX" --disable-nls --disable-libssp --enable-languages=c --without-headers
make all-gcc
make all-target-libgcc
make install-gcc
make install-target-libgcc
Please replace the version with your binutils and gcc version. For example binutils-version might be binutils-2.40 and gcc-version might be gcc-12.1.0.
This will take some time to compile so get some coffee ☕ (or do anything to pass the time). Then after it's done you will have the usable binaries in your /usr/local/i386elf/bin/ prefixed as i386- (or the architecture of your target if you didn't choose i386 as target). For example your cross compiled gcc might be i386-gcc.
Congratulations 🎉 you have successfully cross-compiled your GCC.
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