compiling gcc for multiple targets?

compiling gcc for multiple targets?

[Carl B. Constantine]

I've done a google search on this, but most of the information I found
was old and the crossgcc list no longer exists, so I thought I would
bring it up again.

Is there any way to compile gcc and related utils (binutils, gdb) for
multiple targets in one binary? So I want to compile it to support both
Solaris intel and m68hc11 in one gcc instead of having separate binaries
for each?

If I cannot do this, but have to compile separate versions
(--program-prefix=m6811-elf) are there any issues wrt to libraries if
they are installed to the same place? libiberty.so for example?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Carl B. Constantine         University of Victoria
Programmer Analyst          http://www.csc.uvic.ca
UNIX System Administrator   Victoria, BC, Canada
cconstan@csc.uvic.ca        ELW A248, 721-8766

Re: compiling gcc for multiple targets?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"Carl B. Constantine" <cconstan@csc.uvic.ca> writes:

> Is there any way to compile gcc and related utils (binutils, gdb) for
> multiple targets in one binary? So I want to compile it to support both
> Solaris intel and m68hc11 in one gcc instead of having separate binaries
> for each?

For gcc, no.  For gas and gdb, sometimes.  For the binutils and ld,
yes (use --enable-targets).

> If I cannot do this, but have to compile separate versions
> (--program-prefix=m6811-elf) are there any issues wrt to libraries if
> they are installed to the same place? libiberty.so for example?

libiberty.so is target independent, so it is safe to install the
libiberty.so for multiple targets in the same place.  The target
libraries, such as libstdc++-v3, will by default be installed in
directories whose names depend upon the target, so they should not
ordinarily cause any conflicts.  You should avoid building a shared
libbfd.so, as it will be target-dependent; that is, do not configure
the GNU binutils with --enable-shared.

Ian

Re: compiling gcc for multiple targets?

[Ken Wolcott]

Hi Carl;

  You must be mistaken about the crossgcc mailing list.  I am a
subscriber and there is recent traffic and there are some very *nice*,
*helpful* and *knowledgeable* subscribers.  There is also crosstool
(http://www.kegel.com/crosstool/), a very nice tool written by Dan
Kegel, that might help you, I'm not sure.

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/crossgcc/
crossgcc@sources.redhat.com

Ken

On Tue, 2004-03-30 at 17:20, Carl B. Constantine wrote:
> I've done a google search on this, but most of the information I found
> was old and the crossgcc list no longer exists, so I thought I would
> bring it up again.
> 
> Is there any way to compile gcc and related utils (binutils, gdb) for
> multiple targets in one binary? So I want to compile it to support both
> Solaris intel and m68hc11 in one gcc instead of having separate binaries
> for each?
> 
> If I cannot do this, but have to compile separate versions
> (--program-prefix=m6811-elf) are there any issues wrt to libraries if
> they are installed to the same place? libiberty.so for example?
> 
> Thanks in advance.

Re: compiling gcc for multiple targets?

[Bernd Jendrissek]

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On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 09:46:30AM -0600, Ken Wolcott wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-03-30 at 17:20, Carl B. Constantine wrote:
> > I've done a google search on this, but most of the information I found
> > was old and the crossgcc list no longer exists, so I thought I would
> > bring it up again.

So who's writing all these replies, then?  :)

> > Is there any way to compile gcc and related utils (binutils, gdb) for
> > multiple targets in one binary? So I want to compile it to support both
> > Solaris intel and m68hc11 in one gcc instead of having separate binaries
> > for each?

binutils can be configured with --enable-targets=all, and I use a such
configured binutils daily without problems.  But don't be fooled: it
just configured the BFD and opcodes libraries to *support* all targets
binutils knows; the tools still default to the --target=foo with which
you configured the tools.  And gas (the assembler) cannot generate code
for any other target than the one specified with --target=foo.

GCC supports only one target at a time, but I think if someone wanted to
put in the work, it'd be not-all-that-hard (for a competent hacker) to
make it possible to use multiple backends.  The actual compiler, cc1,
lives in its own target-specific directory, so at a minimum you'd just
need to re-teach the compiler driver (gcc) to find different compilers
again (if it can't still do this - the man page seems to say it can).

More interesting would be if GCC would install a libbackend.so (GPL'ed
and with an undocumented API, of course, to avoid all that
GPL-subversive intermediate-representation stuff) against which a
target-neutral compiler is linked.  And if you watch your namespaces
properly, and hookify  all the target macros, you might get a
libbackend.so that can be configured with --enable-targets=all.

> > If I cannot do this, but have to compile separate versions
> > (--program-prefix=m6811-elf) are there any issues wrt to libraries if
> > they are installed to the same place? libiberty.so for example?

I have binutils configured with --enable-targets=all, and the resulting
libbfd.so and libopcodes.so live in /usr/lib.  I use it daily.

Hmm, no, you'd have to install target libraries (libiberty.{a,so}) to
different places.

- -- 
"IBM has more patent litigation lawyers than SCO has employees." - unknown
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