Building ARM toolchain - part 1: libs and binutils

Searching the Internet for information on how to build arm toolchain from scratch I realize that it is very hard to find  information about this matter (and recent one even harder). I will try to fill this lack of information and try to build toolchain. My main goal is to use a component based on the GNU public license, and using them in as the newest version as it is possible. What is toolchain? (according to wikipedia):

In software, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that are used to create a product (typically another computer program or system of programs). The tools may be used in a chain, so that the output of each tool becomes the input for the next, but the term is used widely to refer to any set of linked development tools.

Requirements

  • Cross compiler, I create one using crosstool-ng and describe this process in  previous post. I will use arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi as entry point compiler.
  • $TARGET is defined as my destination directory:
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export TARGET=/home/pietrushnic/sandbox/toolchain  

Procedure

Kernel header files

  • Clone linux git repository
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git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
  • Install headers $TARGET is home of our toolchain
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make ARCH=arm INSTALL_HDR_PATH=$TARGET/usr headers_install

Libraries (gmp, mpfr, mpc)

  • GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) - changeset used: 14765:0acae62fa162

    • As I said before. I use “latest greatest” ;P version, and for gmp we can reach it using:
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hg clone http://gmplib.org:8000/gmp
  • create configuration files
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./.bootstrap
  • configure
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./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --enable-shared=n --enable-static
  • compile
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make && make check && make install
  • MPFR (GNU Multiple Precision Floating-Point Reliably) - version: r8103

    • get latest version
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svn checkout svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svn/mpfr/trunk mpfr
  • create configuration file
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autoreconf -i
  • configure
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./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --enable-thread-safe  --with-gmp=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --disable-shared --enable-static
  • compile
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make && make install
  • MPC (Multiple Precision Complex)- version: r1146

    • checkout svn
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svn checkout svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svnroot/mpc/trunk mpc
  • create configuration file
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autoreconf -i
  • configure
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./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools  --with-gmp=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --with-mpfr=$TARGET/arm-x-tools  --disable-shared --enable-static
  • compile
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make && make install
  • Binutils - collection of a GNU binary tools:

    • checkout version from anonymous cvs
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cvs -z 9 -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/src
  • login create directory for checkout
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mkdir binutils
  • checkout sources
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cvs -z 9 -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/src co binutils
  • configure
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LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath -Wl,$TARGET/arm-x-tools/lib" ./configure
--build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
--target=arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools
--disable-nls --disable-multilib --disable-werror --with-float=soft
--with-gmp=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --with-mpfr=$TARGET/arm-x-tools
--with-mpc=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --with-sysroot=$TARGET
  • compile
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make configure-host
make
make install

To check if everything was made correctly

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ldd $TARGET/arm-x-tools/bin/arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi-ldd

It should show that it use library compiled previously by us:

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libz.so.1 => /home/pietrushnic/sandbox/toolchain/arm-x-tools/lib/libz.so.1  (0x00007f0086cc5000)

This set gives us a solid base to build the compiler. However, it will be in the next section.


Piotr Król
Founder and Embedded Systems Consultant at 3mdeb as well as freelance CTO of Vitro Technology and CEO of LPN Plant. Passionate about building firmware that enables advanced hardware features in modern products. Dedicated to customers that treat embedded software security and upgradeability as forethought. Open source firmware evangelist interested in platform security and trusted computing. In favor of fixed price projects with a clear definition of success.