Building a GCC cross compile tool chain for Linux ARM on OS X Mountain Lion

2012-12-06T18:45:00Z

If you have a Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Raspberry Pi, or other ARM hardware running Linux, and you want to compile and debug C/C++ applications from your Windows or Linux desktop, it's relatively straightforward: download</a> a pre-built tool chain from Mentor Graphics (formerly Code Sourcery). No such luck for OS X users. You have to build it yourself, and it's pretty painful. Hopefully, the info below will make it less painful for you. If you don't care to build the tools yourself, I posted the binaries on SourceForge</a>.</p>

Here's what I had to do to build all the cross compile binaries:</p>

Install the latest Command Line Tools for XCode</a>.</li>

Install Homebrew</a> (Homebrew is awesome, by the way):</p>

ruby -e "</span>$(</span>curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)</span>"</span>
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</li>

Use Homebrew to install crosstool-ng</a>, mpfr, and gmp:</p>
brew install crosstool-ng mpfr gmp
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</li>

Install Homebrew dupes</a>:</p>
brew tap homebrew/dupes
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</li>

Use Homebrew to Install grep. You already have BSD grep on your Mac, but crosstool-ng scripts use functionality that assumes you have GNU grep, which is why you need it from Homebrew dupes: </p>
brew install grep
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</li>

You need a case-sensitive file system to work with. Fortunately, you can create one in Apple's Disk Utility and mount it. Create one that's at least 5 GB to start. You can increase the size later if needed.</p>
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</ul>
That was the easy part. Now we configure and build the tool chain. </p>


Change the working directory to your mounted case-sensitive volume:</p>
cd</span> /Volumes/{</span>whatever you named it in Disk Utility}</span>
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</li>

Then load crosstool-ng with the ARM Linux preset. The way you call crosstool-ng is via ct-ng</code> (it took me a few minutes to figure that out):</p>
ct-ng arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi
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</li>
</ul>
If things were easy (e.g., if you were doing this on a Linux desktop), you could probably just run ct-ng build</code> at this point and walk away for about 30 minutes and a shiny new cross compile tool chain would be waiting for you when you returned. Most of the remaining steps account for errors that are probably symptomatic of using OS X to run a utility that wasn't written to run on OS X.</p>


Update the paths that crosstool-ng uses to the case-sensitive location:</p>
ct-ng menuconfig
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This brings up a configuration tool that you can use to set all sorts of things. Start with changing paths. Rename the "local tarballs directory", "working directory", and "prefix directory" to /Volumes/{whatever you named it in Disk Utility}/{somethingunique}. While you're in there, turn off the build of Java and Fortran compilers, since you don't need them and they'll just cause more problems.</p>
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If you get an error, be sure to run ct-ng clean</code> before you try to build again. Below are errors I ran into and what I did to get past them. </p>

Static linking impossible on the host system 'x86_64-build_apple-darwin11.2.0'</p>
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Easy workaround: Open the hidden file named .config (this was automatically created in your working directory when you first called ct-ng) and update the line that includes CT_WANTS_STATIC_LINK=y</code> to CT_WANTS_STATIC_LINK=n</code>. Keep in mind that if you go back into menuconfig and save new changes, that will overwrite your change to .config and you'll have to make your edits again.</p>

unknown parameter -Bstatic</p>
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This problem has to do with functionality differences between OS X ld and GNU ld. Building GNU ld for OS X isn't possible AFAIK. To fix this one, either remove or comment out this line in your .config file: CT_CC_STATIC_LIBSTDCXX=y</code></p>
Again, keep in mind that if you go back into menuconfig and save new changes, that will overwrite your change to .config and you'll have to make your edits again.</p>

automatic de-ANSI-fication support has been removed</p>
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Change the version of MPFR to a later version that doesn't result in this error. I used 3.0.1 and it worked.</p>
Then, if you're lucky, you can just run </p>
ct-ng build
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and you'll end up with a working cross compile tool chain. If you've gotten this far, I recommend downloading Eclipse+CDT</a> and configuring it to use your newly-built toolchain. </p>
I got debugging working, too. I had problems with connecting to a 32-bit gdbserver from my 64-bit gdb client. The error looked something like this in the console when trying to start debugging:</p>

readchar: Got EOF</p>
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I fixed this by building a later version of GDB. Here are the changes I made to .config:</p>
# CT_GDB_V_6_8a=y
CT_GDB_7_0_or_later=y
# CT_GDB_VERSION="6.8a"
CT_GDB_VERSION="7.5"
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All of this took me a lot of trial and error, so it's likely I've included some extraneous steps, but I left them in just in case they're needed. Several errors were remedied by just changing to a more recent version of the tools configured in ct-ng menuconfig</code>. Here's the set that worked for me:</p>

Linux kernel: 3.2.32</li>
binutils: 2.19.1a</li>
gcc: 4.6.3</li>
glibc: 2.10.1</li>
dmalloc: disabled</li>
GMP 5.0.2</li>
MPFR 3.0.1</li>
PPL 0.11.2</li>
CLooG/ppl 0.15.11</li>
MPC 0.9</li>
libelf: 0.8.13</li>
</ul>
Handy resources/tips:</p>

Using crosstool-NG on MacOS-X [crosstool-ng.org</a>] -- He says you need MacPorts, but you don't. Homebrew and MacPorts don't always play nice. I installed crosstool-ng via Homebrew, so I avoided MacPorts.</li>
If your build fails, find the error in build.log and search the web with the error string. If you find a response from Yann E. Morin or Titus von Boxberg, read it.</li>
</ul>

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