Talk:GCC Cross-Compiler
Cross-Reference Suggestion
I was thinking of referencing the Porting Newlib article from Step 2 of this tutorial and/or the Articles section at the end of the page - any problems with that? --AJ 07:38, 1 October 2007 (CDT)
What does it Do?
After reading through part 1, i fail1 to see what is done that cannot be done by GCC before creation of this cross compiler. It seems to be a waste of time, and nothing is specified about the platform that can't be accomplished by all other versions of GCC. --Tyler 22:50, 15 March 2007 (CDT)
Either your answer is in GCC_Cross-Compiler#Why_an_OS_developer_should_build_a_cross-compiler, otherwise, could you please be more clear in what the problem is exactly? - Combuster 04:03, 16 March 2007 (CDT)
My problem is... this tutorial does not show you how to "solve" any of these problems. It tells you how to recompile GCC to make only ELF files... something GCC can do anyway, ridding you of the problems. --Tyler 08:25, 16 March 2007 (CDT)
The main difference is that the GCC you are building is a Stage 1 toolchain, not a bootstrapped toolchain. (Not ELF vs COFF like you think) A dedicated crosscompiler does not think its compiling for windows/linux and as such does not fill in the gaps for you. It does just what you ask and only what you ask and nothing more, which is something you cant say of a stock GCC. Some of these 'features' you can override with commandline parameters, but some will stubbornly persist. - Combuster 04:45, 19 March 2007 (CDT)
- Actually, the main difference is that, to my knowlegde, Cygwin GCC doesn't allow you to generate ELF binaries without the help of objcopy. Several other problems - like careless inclusion of system headers, error messages being posted to the forum that cannot be reproduced by people using a different host OS, and more - are also solved by this tutorial. Solar 09:57, 3 April 2007 (CDT)
Texinfo
Has anyone else had problems building Binutils/GCC when Texinfo is not installed? I am not sure what it is used for, but for some reason when not installed the Make fails. -- Tyler 14:02, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
- AFAIK texinfo should only be used to make the documentation. On my setup, running 'make all-gcc' does not, by default, attempt to create the documentation and 'make install-gcc' does not attempt to install it, so texinfo shouldn't be required. Having said that, I do have texinfo installed, so I might not have noticed a call to it. John 14:41, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
- I've never got as far as GCC without Texinfo, so i wouldn't know, it dies in the Binutils build, during a make all. Does Make all create documentation? -- Tyler 15:25, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
- Yes, I'm afraid it does. There is a 'make all-binutils' command, but that also seems to try building in the bfd/doc directory. Apparently running configure with the --without-docdir option stops it trying to install the documentation. I don't know if it stops it trying to make it however. John 16:35, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
- I checked my cygwin setup, and noticed texinfo is installed without me specifically selecting it, so it either is a dependency of one of the other packages I do have, or its installed by default. Since solar's regression test of removing, reinstalling, selecting the basic install + the packages listed always results in an environment that can build the crosscompiler, I don't think its an error in the tutorial. - Combuster 02:55, 14 September 2007 (CDT)