The GNU Toolchain for ARM Target HOWTO

Friends,

After repeated attempts i was successful in building a gcc version 4.0
toolchain for ARM. I have documented the steps and am enclosing it below
for reference, if required by anybody. The patches to be applied to base
glibc are also attached alongwith.

Secondly, is there a web resource where i can upload the compiled
toolchain so that it can be downloaded and used by anybody, as per
his/her requirement.

Thanks

Vineet Tuli

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Howto build toolchain for ARM using gcc 4.0

Note: The following compilation was done on Fedora Core 4 Linux.

Download the following files from their respective web sites:

binutils-2.16.tar.bz2 wget -c ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.16.tar.bz2
gcc-4.0.2.tar.bz2 wget -c ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.0.2/gcc-4.0.2.tar.bz2
glibc-2.3.5.tar.gz wget -c ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.3.5.tar.gz
glibc-linuxthreads-2.3.5.tar.gz wget -c ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-linuxthreads-2.3.5.tar.gz

Place all the downloaded files inside the /usr/src directory of your system.

Create the Build Directories

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src
[root at localhost ]# mkdir build
[root at localhost ]# cd build
[root at localhost ]# mkdir binutils-2.16
[root at localhost ]# mkdir gcc-4.0.2
[root at localhost ]# mkdir glibc-2.3.5

Build binutils

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src
[root at localhost ]# tar –jxf  binutils-2.16.tar.bz2

Chose the prefix for the new tool chain. This is a directory where the tool chain resides. This application report uses /opt/arm-v4 for the new tool chain. The directory is created by the installation of the tools. Go to the /usr/src/build/binutils-2.16 directory to configure and then build the binary utilities with the commands shown below.

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src/build/binutils-2.16
[root at localhost ]# ../../binutils-2.16/configure –-target=arm-linux –-prefix=/opt/armv4
[root at localhost ]# make
[root at localhost ]# make install

The new binary utilities can be found in /opt/armv4/bin. Add the path to the binary utilities into your current path. If you are using the bash shell,use the export command.

[root at localhost ]# export PATH=/opt/armv4/bin:$PATH

Kernel Headers

Download the kernel version from Kernel.org and the patch for the same from www.muru.com using the following:

wget -c http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.14.2.tar.bz2
wget -c http://www.muru.com/linux/omap/patches/patch-2.6.14-omap2.bz2

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr
[root at localhost ]# mkdir arm-linux
[root at localhost ]# cd arm-linux

Now, extract and patch the kernel using following commands:

[root at localhost ]# tar jxf linux-2.6.14.2.tar.bz2
[root at localhost ]# ln -s linux-2.6.14.2 linux
[root at localhost ]# bunzip2 patch-2.6.14-omap2.bz2
[root at localhost ]# cd linux
[root at localhost ]# patch -p1 < ../patch-2.6.14-omap2 
[root at localhost ]# make omap_osk_5912_defconfig

Build gcc

The gcc built here is just enough of the compiler without libraries so that the kernel or the GNU C libraries can be built. Make sure that /opt/armv4/bin is in the current path. To build gcc, the directories /opt/armv4/arm-linux/include/asm and /opt/armv4/arm-linux/include/linux must point to the corresponding kernel directories. Create the soft link from the development tools to the Innovator linux kernel with the following commands:

[root at localhost ]# cd /opt/arm-v4/arm-linux
[root at localhost ]# mkdir include
[root at localhost ]# cd include
[root at localhost ]# ln –s /usr/arm-linux/linux-2.6.14.2/include/asm-arm asm
[root at localhost ]# ln –s /usr/arm-linux//linux-2.6.14.2/include/linux linux

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src
[root at localhost ]# tar –xjf  gcc-4.0.2.tar.bz2

A configuration file must be modified so that the compiler is built without libc includes. Edit the /usr/src/gcc-4.0.2/gcc/config/arm/t-linux file and append

–Dinhibit_libc –D__gthr_posix_h to the line starting with TARGET_LIBGCC2_CFLAGS =.

The top of the file is shown below, after appending the flags.

# Just for these, we omit the frame pointer since it makes such a big
# difference. It is then pointless adding debugging.
TARGET_LIBGCC2_CFLAGS = -fomit-frame-pointer -fPIC –Dinhibit_libc –D__gthr_posix_h
LIBGCC2_DEBUG_CFLAGS = -g0

Go to the /usr/src/build/gcc-4.0.2 directory to configure and build the GNU C compiler with the commands below.

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src/build/gcc-4.0.2
[root at localhost ]# ../../gcc-4.0.2/configure –-target=arm-linux –-prefix=/opt/armv4 --disable-threads –-enable-languages=c
[root at localhost ]# make
[root at localhost ]# make install

Build glibc

Before building glibc, invoke make in the kernel directory (to create linux/include/version.h required by glibc)

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/arm-linux/linux-2.6.14.2
[root at localhost ]# make

Make sure /opt/armv4/bin is in the current path.

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src
[root at localhost ]# tar –xzf glibc-2.3.5.tar.gz
[root at localhost ]# cd glibc-2.3.5
[root at localhost ]# tar –xzf ../glibc-linuxthreads-2.3.5.tar.gz

Apply the attached patches (Details at the end of the document)

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src/build/glibc-2.3.5
[root at localhost ]# ../../glibc-2.3.5/configure arm-linux –-build=i686-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/opt/armv4/arm-linux –-enable-add-ons=linuxthreads
[root at localhost ]# make
[root at localhost ]# make install

The new GNU C library can be found in /opt/armv4/arm-linux.

Build gcc With Additional Languages

Edit the /usr/src/gcc-4.0.2/gcc/config/arm/t-linux file and remove the append (Build gcc). Specifically, remove –Dinhibit_libc –D__gthr_posix_h so that the top of the file appears as follows:

# Just for these, we omit the frame pointer since it makes such a big
# difference. It is then pointless adding debugging.
TARGET_LIBGCC2_CFLAGS = -fomit-frame-pointer -fPIC
LIBGCC2_DEBUG_CFLAGS = -g0

[root at localhost ]# cd /usr/src/build/gcc-4.0.2
[root at localhost ]# rm –rf *
[root at localhost ]# ../../gcc-4.0.2/configure –-target=arm-linux –-prefix=/opt/armv4 –enable-languages=c,c++
[root at localhost ]# make
[root at localhost ]# make install

The complete set of GNU compilation tools can be found in /opt/armv4/bin.

Patches

The following files need to be patched to source code of glibc-2.3.5 for successful compilation of glibc:
(The required patches are attached)

1) glibc-2.3.5/include/libc-symbols.h
2) glibc-2.3.5/string/strcoll.c
3) glibc-2.3.5/include/wchar.h
4) glibc-2.3.5/wcsmbs/wcscoll.c
5) glibc-2.3.5/elf/dynamic-link.h
6) glibc-2.3.5/iconvdata/jis0208.h
7) glibc-2.3.5/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/arm/ioperm.c
8) glibc-2.3.5/sysdeps/arm/dl-machine.h

Note: If during compilation of glibc-2.3.5, following error occurs:
           cannot find -lgcc_eh

Then remove all the occurrences of -lgcc_eh from the files: Makeconfig, configure and configure.in from the top level glibc  source code directory.
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