Building an ARM GCC Toolchain from Source

Step by step guide on building a GCC cross-compilation toolchain from source on Windows and Linux

While we'd strongly recommend starting with one of the precompiled GNU GCC toolchains available for ARM such asCodeSourcery G++ Lite orYagarto(seeSetting up a GCC Development Environment for the Cortex M0/M3 for more information), using a precompiled toolchain leaves you at the mercy of someone else's whims and fancies about what features to include, what libraries to use, etc. Depending on precompiled toolchains also means that you're depending on their authors to regularly update them when new releases of GCC become available.

This tutorial came to life precisely because of a situation like that: GCC 4.5.0 is the first version to have official support for the ARM Cortex-M0core, but unfortunatelyall the precompiled toolchains at the time this article was written were still based on GCC 4.4.x.Roel Verdult (from libnfc.org) came to the rescue and provided this step-by-step tutorial on buildingGCCfrom source in both Linux and Windows for us. If you need to build your own toolchain as well, this tutorial should at least get you well on your way.

Linux

Building GCC under Linux requires less steps than in Windows since a number of required packages are typically already installed on most Linux distributions or they can be easily installed from pre-compiled binaries. GCC compile times are also generally a lot faster under Linux than in Windows, which is helpful for packages as 'large' as a custom GNU GCC for ARM toolchain. That said ... the entire build process will probably still take about an hour on most machines.

This tutorial was written and tested for Ubuntu 10.10, but should be easily adaptable to most modern Linux distributions. The build script currently builds GCC 4.5.2, Binutils 2.21, Newlib 1.19 and GDB 7.2.

Step 1: Install build tools and packages

From the command-prompt, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libmpc-dev
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
sudo apt-get install texinfo
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

Step 2: Build the GCC Toolchain

Download summon-arm-toolchain.tar.gz, decompress it and run it using the following commands:

wget http://www.microbuilder.eu/Files/Tutorials/summon-arm-toolchain.tar.gz
tar -xvzf summon-arm-toolchain.tar.gz
sh summon-arm-toolchain.sh ~/ arm-none-eabi

Step 3: Add the GCC Toolchain to PATH

Next you need to add the location of the compiled binaries to your path variable with the following command:

$ echo "PATH=$PATH:~/arm-none-eabi/bin" >> .bashrc

Note: You will need to restart the console for these changes to take effect.

Windows

Building GCC under Windows is a little bit more complicated than in Linux, since a number of packages need to be installed beforehand. This guide will help you install and configure the required software packages to be able to build a GCC cross-compiling toolchain for ARM.

Note for Windows Users: It will take 90 minutes or more under Windows to build all the tools and libraries required for a GNU GCC cross-compiling toolchain for ARM. To make the installation process as easy as possible and avoid having to restart the process, we strongly recommend using the default folders for MINGW and MSYS, since changing them from "<drive>:\MINGW" and "<drive>:\MSYS" will require extra steps that aren't documented here.

Step 1: Install MinGW and MSYS Base System

Before you can do anything useful, you will need to download Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) andMSYS Base System with GNU Utilities (MSYS), both of which are available from theMinGW SourceForge download page. You can also download the files directly with the following links (which were the most recent versions at the publication of this article, 19 April 2010):

• Direct Download: Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) 5.1.6
• Direct Download: MSYS Base System with GNU Utilities 1.0.11

Step 2: Download GNU wget

Next you need to download wget (a non-interactive network retriever) using the link below, and place the executable file in the "msys\1.0\bin" folder:

• Direct Download: wget

Step 3: Load the MSYS Environment and Start Building

Next you need to start the MSYS environment by selecting "Start -> Programs -> MinGW -> MSYS -> MSYS" in the start menu. (The menu options may vary slightly depending on which version of Windows you are using, and how you're start menu is configured.). This UNIX console will be used to build the necessary packages as well as the GNU GCC ARM Toolchain:

Mount MinGW in MSYS

To access MinGW from MSYS, you will need to configure MSYS to associate "/mingw" with the MinGW installation path (presumably "c:\mingw" if you used the default settings during installation). This can be done with the following command:

mount c:/mingw /mingw

Build GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library)

$ wget ftp://ftp.gmplib.org/pub/gmp-5.0.1/gmp-5.0.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf gmp-5.0.1.tar.gz
$ cd gmp-5.0.1
$ ./configure --prefix=/mingw
$ make
$ make install
$ cd ..

Build MPFR (Multi-Precision Floating Point Library)

$ wget http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-current/mpfr-2.4.2.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf mpfr-2.4.2.tar.gz
$ cd mpfr-2.4.2
$ ./configure --prefix=/mingw
$ make
$ make install
$ cd ..

Build MPC (Multi-Precision Complex Arithmetic Library)

$ wget http://www.multiprecision.org/mpc/download/mpc-0.8.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf mpc-0.8.1.tar.gz
$ cd mpc-0.8.1
$ ./configure --prefix=/mingw
$ make
$ make install
$ cd ..

Step 4: Build GNU GCC ARM Toolchain

Last, you need to download a simple script file that will handle the compilation of the GNU GCC ARM Toolchain (GCC 4.5.0, Newlib 1.18.0, GDB 7.1 and Binutils 2.20.1). Download the following file, and unzip it in the "<drive>:\msys\1.0\home\<username>\" folder:

• Direct Download: GCC Build Script

Build GNU GCC

$ sh summon-arm-toolchain.sh ~ arm-none-eabi

Step 5: Adding the Environment Variables in Windows

In order to access the newly built GCC toolchain from the command-prompt, you will need to add the appropriate paths to the Windows "path". You can do this using the following steps:

• Right-click on My Computer and select Properties from the popup-menu
• Switch to the Advanced tab
  
• From there, select the Environment Variables button at the bottom
  
• Find the Path system variable and click the Edit button
  

"Path" Environment Variables

C:\msys\1.0\home\<username>\arm-none-eabi\bin;C:\msys\1.0\bin\

You may need to reset your system in order for the new path variables to take effect. At this point, you should be able to build makefile-based projects from the command-line using "make" with the new GNU GCC ARM cross-compiling toolchain!

转载地址： http://www.microbuilder.eu/Tutorials/SoftwareDevelopment/BuildingGCCToolchain.aspx