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 corsstool-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

export TARGET=/home/pietrushnic/sandbox/toolchain

Procedure:

1. Kernel header files:
1. clone linux git repository

   git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git

2. install headers $TARGET is home of our toolchain

   make ARCH=arm INSTALL\_HDR\_PATH=\$TARGET/usr headers\_install

2. Libraries (gmp, mpfr, mpc)
   1. 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:

        hg clone http://gmplib.org:8000/gmp

      • create configuration files

        ./.bootstrap

      • configure

        ./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --enable-shared=n \
        --enable-static

      • compile

        make
        make check
        make install

   2. MPFR (GNU Multiple Precision Floating-Point Reliably) - version: r8103
      • get latest version

        svn checkout svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svn/mpfr/trunk mpfr

      • create configuration file

        autoreconf -i

      • configure

        ./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --enable-thread-safe \
        --with-gmp=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --disable-shared --enable-static

      • compile

        make
        make install

   3. MPC (Multiple Precision Complex)- version: r1146
      • checkout svn

        svn checkout svn://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svnroot/mpc/trunk mpc

      • create configuration file

        autoreconf -i

      • configure

        ./configure --prefix=$TARGET/arm-x-tools \
        --with-gmp=$TARGET/arm-x-tools --with-mpfr=$TARGET/arm-x-tools \
        --disable-shared --enable-static

      • compile

        make
        make install

3. Binutils - collection of a GNU binary tools:
   • checkout version from anonymous cvs

     cvs -z 9 -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/src login

     create directory for checkout

     mkdir binutils

     checkout sources

     cvs -z 9 -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/src co binutils

   • configure

     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

     make configure-host
     make
     make install

   • to check if everything was made correctly

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

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

     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.