The Build Process

of (GNU Tools for ARM Embedded Processors)

2015-06

c 2012-2015 ARM Ltd.

Copyright

Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1

Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10. . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.1
1.2

Install Ubuntu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Tune environment and install required softwares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.1 Change /bin/sh to bash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.2 Change software sources to Main server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.3 Install common tools and libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.4 Download and deploy prebuilt native tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Build GNU Tools for ARM Embedded Processors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2
2
2
3
4
4
6

Build GNU Tools on Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4

Prepare a Mac OS X environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Install the Command Line Tools for Xcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Install MacTeX to build PDF format documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Build the tool chain under Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Appendix A

7
8
9
9

Known Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Preface

Preface
This manual provides a step-by-step guide to help you build GNU Tools
for ARM Embedded Processors on a newly installed Ubuntu 8.10 operating
system.
Note that the steps below may most likely also work on an Ubuntu which
is not newly installed or version other than 8.10, but it is not guaranteed.
In this case please go through Appendix A [Known Issues], page 10 before
you go, and you need to solve any other problems you may encounter by
yourself. We highly appreciate if you could share the problems and solutions
with us.

Chapter 1: Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

1 Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

1.1 Install Ubuntu
Ubuntu 8.10 ISO image is available from http://old-releases.ubuntu.com
/releases/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso. You can install it as
a native system or a virtual machine. The command lines provided in this
document are all using user id build as an example, so please create a
new user called build in the system. Otherwise, you have to replace user
id build with your own one.

1.2 Tune environment and install required

softwares
1.2.1 Change /bin/sh to bash
Some shell scripts in gcc and other packages are incompatible with the dash
shell, which is the default /bin/sh for Ubuntu 8.10. You must make /bin/sh
a symbolic link to one of the supported shells: saying bash. Here on Ubuntu
8.10 system, this can be done by running following command firstly:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow dash

Then choose No in the Configuring dash popup dialog and press enter.
You can run following command and check that /bin/sh points to bash:
$ ls -l /bin/sh
...... /bin/sh -> bash

Chapter 1: Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

1.2.2 Change software sources to Main server

On Ubuntu 8.10 system, click System->Administration->Software
Sources to open Software Sources dialog, choose Main server in
Download from: list box, then click close. You will be prompted
by a window saying The information about available software is
out-of-date, please click Reload. And then there will be a warning
message box popped up, which can be just ignored by clicking Close.

Edit the file using command line:

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

replace all http://*.ubuntu.com with http://old-releases.ubuntu.com

in that file, save and exit. Run following command to update package list.
It should not fail, or else something has been wrong.
$ sudo apt-get update

Chapter 1: Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

1.2.3 Install common tools and libraries

Install common tools and libraries needed by build process with below command:
$ sudo apt-get install apt-src \
scons \
mingw32-runtime \
p7zip-full \
gawk \
gzip \
perl \
autoconf \
m4 \
automake \
libtool \
libncurses5-dev \
gettext \
gperf \
dejagnu \
expect \
tcl \
autogen \
guile-1.6 \
flex \
flip \
bison \
tofrodos \
texinfo \
g++ \
gcc-multilib \
libgmp3-dev \
libmpfr-dev \
debhelper \
texlive \
texlive-extra-utils

Note that the package management software might complain that several
packages cannot be installed properly while installing texlive and texliveextra-utils. It wont harm our building process, please just ignore it now.
Some of those tools might be unnecessary, but it wont hurt if installed.

1.2.4 Download and deploy prebuilt native tools

In order to save effort to prepare the native build tools, we provide prebuilt ones at website https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded-misc
/native-build-tools/20150408. The related source package and script are
also provided. Please download the tool and decompress it to a proper place,
it will be used in subsequent steps to build gcc arm embedded toolchain. The
command to decompress it looks like:
tar xf prebuilt-native-tools.tar.lzma --lzma

Chapter 1: Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

Please be noted that those prebuilt tools are for Ubuntu 8.10 32-bit and
not suitable for any other build platforms. For those working on other build
platforms, please either prepare your own build tools and use them through
option build tools of build script or just use the ones from your system by
not specifying the build tools option.

Chapter 1: Build GNU Tools on Ubuntu 8.10

1.3 Build GNU Tools for ARM Embedded

Processors
If you download and decompress the prebuilt tools successfully, you have set
up the building environment. You can now start to build the toolchain by
yourself with below commands:
#Copy the src release package into ~/toolchain/ directory
$ cp gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609-src.tar.bz2 ~/toolchain
#Prepare source codes
$ cd ~/toolchain
$ tar -xjf gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609-src.tar.bz2
$ cd ./gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609/src
$ find -name *.tar.* | xargs -I% tar -xf %
$ cd ../
#Start building the toolchain.
#Can specify "--skip_steps=mingw32" option to skip building windows host
#toolchain, and if specify that option when building prerequisites,
#you have to specify it when building toolchain too.
#
#Without option --build_tools, the tools in current PATH will be used.
#You can download and deploy the provided prebuilt one, use it like
#./build-prerequisites.sh --build_tools=/home/build/prebuilt-native-tools
# or ./build-toolchain.sh --build_tools=/home/build/prebuilt-native-tools
$ ./build-prerequisites.sh --build_tools=YOUR_NATIVE_TOOLS_PATH
$ ./build-toolchain.sh --build_tools=YOUR_NATIVE_TOOLS_PATH

After this, you can cd into

~/toolchain/gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609/pkg and find
the built toolchain/source code packages and the md5 checksum file.

Chapter 2: Build GNU Tools on Mac OS X

2 Build GNU Tools on Mac OS X

In addition to the build on Ubuntu, the build scripts in same source package
can also be used on Mac OS X to natively build a tool chain whose host is
Mac OS X and target is arm-none-eabi. In this step we will describe how to
install required software components and how to execute the build scripts.
After this step you should be able to generate a same tool chain with the
one released. Due to resource limit, this build process is only tested against
Mac OS X 10.7.3 along with components listed below.

2.1 Prepare a Mac OS X environment

The hardware should be an x86-based Mac machine like iMac. The installed
OS should be Mac OS X which is updated to 10.7.3. The way to find out
the Mac OS X version information is to click the Apple menu and choose
About This Mac.

Chapter 2: Build GNU Tools on Mac OS X

For the environment we are using, it looks as below:

2.2 Install the Command Line Tools for Xcode

This component is originally part of Apple Xcode but can be installed separately without Xcode. It can be freely obtained from Apples official website
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action. A valid Apple
ID is required to login and download. The one we are using is in the item
named Command Line Tools for Xcode - June 2012. After the download
finishes, just double click the .dmg file and follow the instructions to install
it.

Chapter 2: Build GNU Tools on Mac OS X

2.3 Install MacTeX to build PDF format

documents
This is an optional step and can be skipped if PDF format documents arent
needed. The build process will use TeX engineer provided by MacTeX2012 to generate PDF format documents. This component can be freely
obtained from its official website http://www.tug.org/mactex/2012/. Its
original size is approximately 2.1G. After download, just double click the
MacTeX.pkg file and follow the instructions to install it. By default
the related TeX executable files wont be installed into default path like
/usr/bin, so we need restart the Terminal before we run the build scripts.

2.4 Build the tool chain under Mac OS X

With all the dependent packages installed, we can start to natively build the
tool chain on Mac OS. Following are the commands and steps we are using:
#Copy the src release package into ~/mac-build/ directory
$ cp gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609-src.tar.bz2 ~/mac-build
#Prepare source codes
$ cd ~/mac-build
$ tar xjf gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609-src.tar.bz2
$ cd ./gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q2-20150609/src
$ find . -name *.tar.* | xargs -I% tar -xf %
$ cd ..
#Start building the toolchain.
$ ./build-prerequisites.sh
$ ./build-toolchain.sh

Appendix A: Known Issues

10

Appendix A Known Issues

The commands given in this document and build scripts sometimes
have a problem when running on Ubuntu 9.10 due to a bug in the
tar-1.22-1 package. You can update tar to an higher version.
For more information, please refer to https://bugs.launchpad.net
/ubuntu/+source/tar/+bug/453330.
If you are using different build environment and tools, you might run
into a problem where binutils can not be successfully built. This is
probably caused by binutils bug 13036. For more information, please
refer to http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=13036.