Installing GCC

Please read this document carefully before installing the GNU Compiler Collection on your machine.

Note that this list of install notes is not a list of supported hosts or targets. Not all supported hosts and targets are listed here, only the ones that require host-specific or target-specific information have to.

aarch64*-*-*

Binutils pre 2.24 does not have support for selecting -mabi and does not support ILP32. If it is used to build GCC 4.9 or later, GCC will not support option -mabi=ilp32.

To enable a workaround for the Cortex-A53 erratum number 835769 by default (for all CPUs regardless of -mcpu option given) at configure time use the --enable-fix-cortex-a53-835769 option. This will enable the fix by default and can be explicitly disabled during compilation by passing the -mno-fix-cortex-a53-835769 option. Conversely, --disable-fix-cortex-a53-835769 will disable the workaround by default. The workaround is disabled by default if neither of --enable-fix-cortex-a53-835769 or --disable-fix-cortex-a53-835769 is given at configure time.

To enable a workaround for the Cortex-A53 erratum number 843419 by default (for all CPUs regardless of -mcpu option given) at configure time use the --enable-fix-cortex-a53-843419 option. This workaround is applied at link time. Enabling the workaround will cause GCC to pass the relevant option to the linker. It can be explicitly disabled during compilation by passing the -mno-fix-cortex-a53-843419 option. Conversely, --disable-fix-cortex-a53-843419 will disable the workaround by default. The workaround is disabled by default if neither of --enable-fix-cortex-a53-843419 or --disable-fix-cortex-a53-843419 is given at configure time.

alpha*-*-*

This section contains general configuration information for all Alpha-based platforms using ELF. In addition to reading this section, please read all other sections that match your target.

We require binutils 2.11.2 or newer. Previous binutils releases had a number of problems with DWARF 2 debugging information, not the least of which is incorrect linking of shared libraries.

amd64-*-solaris2.1[0-9]*

arc-*-elf32

Use ‘configure --target=arc-elf32 --with-cpu=cpu --enable-languages="c,c++"’ to configure GCC, with cpu being one of ‘arc600’, ‘arc601’, or ‘arc700’.

arc-linux-uclibc

Use ‘configure --target=arc-linux-uclibc --with-cpu=arc700 --enable-languages="c,c++"’ to configure GCC.

arm-*-eabi

Building the Ada frontend commonly fails (an infinite loop executing xsinfo) if the host compiler is GNAT 4.8. Host compilers built from the GNAT 4.6, 4.9 or 5 release branches are known to succeed.

avr

ATMEL AVR-family micro controllers. These are used in embedded applications. There are no standard Unix configurations. See “AVR Options” in the main manual for the list of supported MCU types.

Further installation notes and other useful information about AVR tools can also be obtained from:

Error: register required

Blackfin

The Blackfin processor, an Analog Devices DSP. See “Blackfin Options” in the main manual

More information, and a version of binutils with support for this processor, is available at https://blackfin.uclinux.org

CR16

The CR16 CompactRISC architecture is a 16-bit architecture. This architecture is used in embedded applications.

Use ‘configure --target=cr16-elf --enable-languages=c,c++’ to configure GCC for building a CR16 elf cross-compiler.

Use ‘configure --target=cr16-uclinux --enable-languages=c,c++’ to configure GCC for building a CR16 uclinux cross-compiler.

CRIS

CRIS is the CPU architecture in Axis Communications ETRAX system-on-a-chip series. These are used in embedded applications.

DOS

You cannot install GCC by itself on MSDOS; it will not compile under any MSDOS compiler except itself. You need to get the complete compilation package DJGPP, which includes binaries as well as sources, and includes all the necessary compilation tools and libraries.

epiphany-*-elf

*-*-freebsd*

Support for FreeBSD 1 was discontinued in GCC 3.2. Support for FreeBSD 2 (and any mutant a.out variants of FreeBSD 3) was discontinued in GCC 4.0.

In order to better utilize FreeBSD base system functionality and match the configuration of the system compiler, GCC 4.5 and above as well as GCC 4.4 past 2010-06-20 leverage SSP support in libc (which is present on FreeBSD 7 or later) and the use of __cxa_atexit by default (on FreeBSD 6 or later). The use of dl_iterate_phdr inside libgcc_s.so.1 and boehm-gc (on FreeBSD 7 or later) is enabled by GCC 4.5 and above.

We support FreeBSD using the ELF file format with DWARF 2 debugging for all CPU architectures. You may use -gstabs instead of -g, if you really want the old debugging format. There are no known issues with mixing object files and libraries with different debugging formats. Otherwise, this release of GCC should now match more of the configuration used in the stock FreeBSD configuration of GCC. In particular, --enable-threads is now configured by default. However, as a general user, do not attempt to replace the system compiler with this release. Known to bootstrap and check with good results on FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE. In the past, known to bootstrap and check with good results on FreeBSD 3.0, 3.4, 4.0, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.8, 4.9 and 5-CURRENT.

The version of binutils installed in /usr/bin probably works with this release of GCC. Bootstrapping against the latest GNU binutils and/or the version found in /usr/ports/devel/binutils has been known to enable additional features and improve overall testsuite results. However, it is currently known that boehm-gc may not configure properly on FreeBSD prior to the FreeBSD 7.0 release with GNU binutils after 2.16.1.

ft32-*-elf

h8300-hms

The calling convention and structure layout has changed in release 2.6. All code must be recompiled. The calling convention now passes the first three arguments in function calls in registers. Structures are no longer a multiple of 2 bytes.

hppa*-hp-hpux*

We require using gas/binutils on all hppa platforms. Version 2.19 or later is recommended.

It may be helpful to configure GCC with the --with-gnu-as and --with-as=… options to ensure that GCC can find GAS.

The HP assembler should not be used with GCC. It is rarely tested and may not work. It shouldn’t be used with any languages other than C due to its many limitations.

Specifically, -g does not work (HP-UX uses a peculiar debugging format which GCC does not know about). It also inserts timestamps into each object file it creates, causing the 3-stage comparison test to fail during a bootstrap. You should be able to continue by saying ‘make all-host all-target’ after getting the failure from ‘make’.

Various GCC features are not supported. For example, it does not support weak symbols or alias definitions. As a result, explicit template instantiations are required when using C++. This makes it difficult if not impossible to build many C++ applications.

There are two default scheduling models for instructions. These are PROCESSOR_7100LC and PROCESSOR_8000. They are selected from the pa-risc architecture specified for the target machine when configuring. PROCESSOR_8000 is the default. PROCESSOR_7100LC is selected when the target is a ‘hppa1*’ machine.

The PROCESSOR_8000 model is not well suited to older processors. Thus, it is important to completely specify the machine architecture when configuring if you want a model other than PROCESSOR_8000. The macro TARGET_SCHED_DEFAULT can be defined in BOOT_CFLAGS if a different default scheduling model is desired.

As of GCC 4.0, GCC uses the UNIX 95 namespace for HP-UX 10.10 through 11.00, and the UNIX 98 namespace for HP-UX 11.11 and later. This namespace change might cause problems when bootstrapping with an earlier version of GCC or the HP compiler as essentially the same namespace is required for an entire build. This problem can be avoided in a number of ways. With HP cc, UNIX_STD can be set to ‘95’ or ‘98’. Another way is to add an appropriate set of predefines to CC. The description for the munix= option contains a list of the predefines used with each standard.

hppa*-hp-hpux10

For hpux10.20, we highly recommend you pick up the latest sed patch PHCO_19798 from HP.

The C++ ABI has changed incompatibly in GCC 4.0. COMDAT subspaces are used for one-only code and data. This resolves many of the previous problems in using C++ on this target. However, the ABI is not compatible with the one implemented under HP-UX 11 using secondary definitions.

hppa*-hp-hpux11

GCC 3.0 and up support HP-UX 11. GCC 2.95.x is not supported and cannot be used to compile GCC 3.0 and up.

Refer to binaries for information about obtaining precompiled GCC binaries for HP-UX. Precompiled binaries must be obtained to build the Ada language as it cannot be bootstrapped using C. Ada is only available for the 32-bit PA-RISC runtime.

Starting with GCC 3.4 an ISO C compiler is required to bootstrap. The bundled compiler supports only traditional C; you will need either HP’s unbundled compiler, or a binary distribution of GCC.

It is possible to build GCC 3.3 starting with the bundled HP compiler, but the process requires several steps. GCC 3.3 can then be used to build later versions.

There are several possible approaches to building the distribution. Binutils can be built first using the HP tools. Then, the GCC distribution can be built. The second approach is to build GCC first using the HP tools, then build binutils, then rebuild GCC. There have been problems with various binary distributions, so it is best not to start from a binary distribution.

On 64-bit capable systems, there are two distinct targets. Different installation prefixes must be used if both are to be installed on the same system. The ‘hppa[1-2]*-hp-hpux11*’ target generates code for the 32-bit PA-RISC runtime architecture and uses the HP linker. The ‘hppa64-hp-hpux11*’ target generates 64-bit code for the PA-RISC 2.0 architecture.

The script config.guess now selects the target type based on the compiler detected during configuration. You must define PATH or CC so that configure finds an appropriate compiler for the initial bootstrap. When CC is used, the definition should contain the options that are needed whenever CC is used.

Specifically, options that determine the runtime architecture must be in CC to correctly select the target for the build. It is also convenient to place many other compiler options in CC. For example, CC="cc -Ac +DA2.0W -Wp,-H16376 -D_CLASSIC_TYPES -D_HPUX_SOURCE" can be used to bootstrap the GCC 3.3 branch with the HP compiler in 64-bit K&R/bundled mode. The +DA2.0W option will result in the automatic selection of the ‘hppa64-hp-hpux11*’ target. The macro definition table of cpp needs to be increased for a successful build with the HP compiler. _CLASSIC_TYPES and _HPUX_SOURCE need to be defined when building with the bundled compiler, or when using the -Ac option. These defines aren’t necessary with -Ae.

It is best to explicitly configure the ‘hppa64-hp-hpux11*’ target with the --with-ld=… option. This overrides the standard search for ld. The two linkers supported on this target require different commands. The default linker is determined during configuration. As a result, it’s not possible to switch linkers in the middle of a GCC build. This has been reported to sometimes occur in unified builds of binutils and GCC.

A recent linker patch must be installed for the correct operation of GCC 3.3 and later. PHSS_26559 and PHSS_24304 are the oldest linker patches that are known to work. They are for HP-UX 11.00 and 11.11, respectively. PHSS_24303, the companion to PHSS_24304, might be usable but it hasn’t been tested. These patches have been superseded. Consult the HP patch database to obtain the currently recommended linker patch for your system.

The patches are necessary for the support of weak symbols on the 32-bit port, and for the running of initializers and finalizers. Weak symbols are implemented using SOM secondary definition symbols. Prior to HP-UX 11, there are bugs in the linker support for secondary symbols. The patches correct a problem of linker core dumps creating shared libraries containing secondary symbols, as well as various other linking issues involving secondary symbols.

GCC 3.3 uses the ELF DT_INIT_ARRAY and DT_FINI_ARRAY capabilities to run initializers and finalizers on the 64-bit port. The 32-bit port uses the linker +init and +fini options for the same purpose. The patches correct various problems with the +init/+fini options, including program core dumps. Binutils 2.14 corrects a problem on the 64-bit port resulting from HP’s non-standard use of the .init and .fini sections for array initializers and finalizers.

Although the HP and GNU linkers are both supported for the ‘hppa64-hp-hpux11*’ target, it is strongly recommended that the HP linker be used for link editing on this target.

At this time, the GNU linker does not support the creation of long branch stubs. As a result, it cannot successfully link binaries containing branch offsets larger than 8 megabytes. In addition, there are problems linking shared libraries, linking executables with -static, and with dwarf2 unwind and exception support. It also doesn’t provide stubs for internal calls to global functions in shared libraries, so these calls cannot be overloaded.

The HP dynamic loader does not support GNU symbol versioning, so symbol versioning is not supported. It may be necessary to disable symbol versioning with --disable-symvers when using GNU ld.

POSIX threads are the default. The optional DCE thread library is not supported, so --enable-threads=dce does not work.

*-*-linux-gnu

Versions of libstdc++-v3 starting with 3.2.1 require bug fixes present in glibc 2.2.5 and later. More information is available in the libstdc++-v3 documentation.

i?86-*-linux*

As of GCC 3.3, binutils 2.13.1 or later is required for this platform. See bug 10877 for more information.

If you receive Signal 11 errors when building on GNU/Linux, then it is possible you have a hardware problem. Further information on this can be found on www.bitwizard.nl.

i?86-*-solaris2.10

Use this for Solaris 10 or later on x86 and x86-64 systems. Starting with GCC 4.7, there is also a 64-bit ‘amd64-*-solaris2.1[0-9]*’ or ‘x86_64-*-solaris2.1[0-9]*’ configuration that corresponds to ‘sparcv9-sun-solaris2*’.

It is recommended that you configure GCC to use the GNU assembler. The versions included in Solaris 10, from GNU binutils 2.15 (in /usr/sfw/bin/gas), and Solaris 11, from GNU binutils 2.19 or newer (also available as /usr/bin/gas and /usr/gnu/bin/as), work fine. The current version, from GNU binutils 2.29, is known to work, but the version from GNU binutils 2.26 must be avoided. Recent versions of the Solaris assembler in /usr/ccs/bin/as work almost as well, though.

For linking, the Solaris linker, is preferred. If you want to use the GNU linker instead, note that due to a packaging bug the version in Solaris 10, from GNU binutils 2.15 (in /usr/sfw/bin/gld), cannot be used, while the version in Solaris 11, from GNU binutils 2.19 or newer (also in /usr/gnu/bin/ld and /usr/bin/gld), works, as does the latest version, from GNU binutils 2.29.

To use GNU as, configure with the options --with-gnu-as --with-as=/usr/sfw/bin/gas. It may be necessary to configure with --without-gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld to guarantee use of Sun ld.

ia64-*-linux

IA-64 processor (also known as IPF, or Itanium Processor Family) running GNU/Linux.

If you are using the installed system libunwind library with --with-system-libunwind, then you must use libunwind 0.98 or later.

None of the following versions of GCC has an ABI that is compatible with any of the other versions in this list, with the exception that Red Hat 2.96 and Trillian 000171 are compatible with each other: 3.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.1, 3.0, Red Hat 2.96, and Trillian 000717. This primarily affects C++ programs and programs that create shared libraries. GCC 3.1 or later is recommended for compiling linux, the kernel. As of version 3.1 GCC is believed to be fully ABI compliant, and hence no more major ABI changes are expected.

ia64-*-hpux*

Building GCC on this target requires the GNU Assembler. The bundled HP assembler will not work. To prevent GCC from using the wrong assembler, the option --with-gnu-as may be necessary.

The GCC libunwind library has not been ported to HPUX. This means that for GCC versions 3.2.3 and earlier, --enable-libunwind-exceptions is required to build GCC. For GCC 3.3 and later, this is the default. For gcc 3.4.3 and later, --enable-libunwind-exceptions is removed and the system libunwind library will always be used.

*-ibm-aix*

Support for AIX version 3 and older was discontinued in GCC 3.4. Support for AIX version 4.2 and older was discontinued in GCC 4.5.

“out of memory” bootstrap failures may indicate a problem with process resource limits (ulimit). Hard limits are configured in the /etc/security/limits system configuration file.

GCC 4.9 and above require a C++ compiler for bootstrap. IBM VAC++ / xlC cannot bootstrap GCC. xlc can bootstrap an older version of GCC and G++ can bootstrap recent releases of GCC.

GCC can bootstrap with recent versions of IBM XLC, but bootstrapping with an earlier release of GCC is recommended. Bootstrapping with XLC requires a larger data segment, which can be enabled through the LDR_CNTRL environment variable, e.g.,

% LDR_CNTRL=MAXDATA=0x50000000
% export LDR_CNTRL

One can start with a pre-compiled version of GCC to build from sources. One may delete GCC’s “fixed” header files when starting with a version of GCC built for an earlier release of AIX.

To speed up the configuration phases of bootstrapping and installing GCC, one may use GNU Bash instead of AIX /bin/sh, e.g.,

% CONFIG_SHELL=/opt/freeware/bin/bash
% export CONFIG_SHELL

and then proceed as described in the build instructions, where we strongly recommend specifying an absolute path to invoke srcdir/configure.

Because GCC on AIX is built as a 32-bit executable by default, (although it can generate 64-bit programs) the GMP and MPFR libraries required by gfortran must be 32-bit libraries. Building GMP and MPFR as static archive libraries works better than shared libraries.

Errors involving alloca when building GCC generally are due to an incorrect definition of CC in the Makefile or mixing files compiled with the native C compiler and GCC. During the stage1 phase of the build, the native AIX compiler must be invoked as cc (not xlc). Once configure has been informed of xlc, one needs to use ‘make distclean’ to remove the configure cache files and ensure that CC environment variable does not provide a definition that will confuse configure. If this error occurs during stage2 or later, then the problem most likely is the version of Make (see above).

The native as and ld are recommended for bootstrapping on AIX. The GNU Assembler, GNU Linker, and GNU Binutils version 2.20 is the minimum level that supports bootstrap on AIX 5. The GNU Assembler has not been updated to support AIX 6 or AIX 7. The native AIX tools do interoperate with GCC.

AIX 7.1 added partial support for DWARF debugging, but full support requires AIX 7.1 TL03 SP7 that supports additional DWARF sections and fixes a bug in the assembler. AIX 7.1 TL03 SP5 distributed a version of libm.a missing important symbols; a fix for IV77796 will be included in SP6.

AIX 5.3 TL10, AIX 6.1 TL05 and AIX 7.1 TL00 introduced an AIX assembler change that sometimes produces corrupt assembly files causing AIX linker errors. The bug breaks GCC bootstrap on AIX and can cause compilation failures with existing GCC installations. An AIX iFix for AIX 5.3 is available (APAR IZ98385 for AIX 5.3 TL10, APAR IZ98477 for AIX 5.3 TL11 and IZ98134 for AIX 5.3 TL12). AIX 5.3 TL11 SP8, AIX 5.3 TL12 SP5, AIX 6.1 TL04 SP11, AIX 6.1 TL05 SP7, AIX 6.1 TL06 SP6, AIX 6.1 TL07 and AIX 7.1 TL01 should include the fix.

Building libstdc++.a requires a fix for an AIX Assembler bug APAR IY26685 (AIX 4.3) or APAR IY25528 (AIX 5.1). It also requires a fix for another AIX Assembler bug and a co-dependent AIX Archiver fix referenced as APAR IY53606 (AIX 5.2) or as APAR IY54774 (AIX 5.1)

‘libstdc++’ in GCC 3.4 increments the major version number of the shared object and GCC installation places the libstdc++.a shared library in a common location which will overwrite the and GCC 3.3 version of the shared library. Applications either need to be re-linked against the new shared library or the GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.3 versions of the ‘libstdc++’ shared object needs to be available to the AIX runtime loader. The GCC 3.1 ‘libstdc++.so.4’, if present, and GCC 3.3 ‘libstdc++.so.5’ shared objects can be installed for runtime dynamic loading using the following steps to set the ‘F_LOADONLY’ flag in the shared object for each multilib libstdc++.a installed:

% ar -x libstdc++.a libstdc++.so.4 libstdc++.so.5

Enable the ‘F_LOADONLY’ flag so that the shared object will be available for runtime dynamic loading, but not linking:

% strip -e libstdc++.so.4 libstdc++.so.5

% ar -q libstdc++.a libstdc++.so.4 libstdc++.so.5

Eventually, the --with-aix-soname=svr4 configure option may drop the need for this procedure for libraries that support it.

Linking executables and shared libraries may produce warnings of duplicate symbols. The assembly files generated by GCC for AIX always have included multiple symbol definitions for certain global variable and function declarations in the original program. The warnings should not prevent the linker from producing a correct library or runnable executable.

AIX 4.3 utilizes a “large format” archive to support both 32-bit and 64-bit object modules. The routines provided in AIX 4.3.0 and AIX 4.3.1 to parse archive libraries did not handle the new format correctly. These routines are used by GCC and result in error messages during linking such as “not a COFF file”. The version of the routines shipped with AIX 4.3.1 should work for a 32-bit environment. The -g option of the archive command may be used to create archives of 32-bit objects using the original “small format”. A correct version of the routines is shipped with AIX 4.3.2 and above.

Some versions of the AIX binder (linker) can fail with a relocation overflow severe error when the -bbigtoc option is used to link GCC-produced object files into an executable that overflows the TOC. A fix for APAR IX75823 (OVERFLOW DURING LINK WHEN USING GCC AND -BBIGTOC) is available from IBM Customer Support and from its techsupport.services.ibm.com website as PTF U455193.

The AIX 4.3.2.1 linker (bos.rte.bind_cmds Level 4.3.2.1) will dump core with a segmentation fault when invoked by any version of GCC. A fix for APAR IX87327 is available from IBM Customer Support and from its techsupport.services.ibm.com website as PTF U461879. This fix is incorporated in AIX 4.3.3 and above.

The initial assembler shipped with AIX 4.3.0 generates incorrect object files. A fix for APAR IX74254 (64BIT DISASSEMBLED OUTPUT FROM COMPILER FAILS TO ASSEMBLE/BIND) is available from IBM Customer Support and from its techsupport.services.ibm.com website as PTF U453956. This fix is incorporated in AIX 4.3.1 and above.

AIX provides National Language Support (NLS). Compilers and assemblers use NLS to support locale-specific representations of various data formats including floating-point numbers (e.g., ‘.’ vs ‘,’ for separating decimal fractions). There have been problems reported where GCC does not produce the same floating-point formats that the assembler expects. If one encounters this problem, set the LANG environment variable to ‘C’ or ‘En_US’.

A default can be specified with the -mcpu=cpu_type switch and using the configure option --with-cpu-cpu_type.

iq2000-*-elf

Vitesse IQ2000 processors. These are used in embedded applications. There are no standard Unix configurations.

lm32-*-elf

lm32-*-uclinux

Lattice Mico32 processor. This configuration is intended for embedded systems running uClinux.

m32c-*-elf

m32r-*-elf

m68k-*-*

By default, ‘m68k-*-elf*’, ‘m68k-*-rtems’, ‘m68k-*-uclinux’ and ‘m68k-*-linux’ build libraries for both M680x0 and ColdFire processors. If you only need the M680x0 libraries, you can omit the ColdFire ones by passing --with-arch=m68k to configure. Alternatively, you can omit the M680x0 libraries by passing --with-arch=cf to configure. These targets default to 5206 or 5475 code as appropriate for the target system when configured with --with-arch=cf and 68020 code otherwise.

The ‘m68k-*-netbsd’ and ‘m68k-*-openbsd’ targets also support the --with-arch option. They will generate ColdFire CFV4e code when configured with --with-arch=cf and 68020 code otherwise.

You can override the default processors listed above by configuring with --with-cpu=target. This target can either be a -mcpu argument or one of the following values: ‘m68000’, ‘m68010’, ‘m68020’, ‘m68030’, ‘m68040’, ‘m68060’, ‘m68020-40’ and ‘m68020-60’.

m68k-*-uclinux

GCC 4.3 changed the uClinux configuration so that it uses the ‘m68k-linux-gnu’ ABI rather than the ‘m68k-elf’ ABI. It also added improved support for C++ and flat shared libraries, both of which were ABI changes.

microblaze-*-elf

Xilinx MicroBlaze processor. This configuration is intended for embedded systems.

mips-*-*

If on a MIPS system you get an error message saying “does not have gp sections for all it’s [sic] sectons [sic]”, don’t worry about it. This happens whenever you use GAS with the MIPS linker, but there is not really anything wrong, and it is okay to use the output file. You can stop such warnings by installing the GNU linker.

It would be nice to extend GAS to produce the gp tables, but they are optional, and there should not be a warning about their absence.

The libstdc++ atomic locking routines for MIPS targets requires MIPS II and later. A patch went in just after the GCC 3.3 release to make ‘mips*-*-*’ use the generic implementation instead. You can also configure for ‘mipsel-elf’ as a workaround. The ‘mips*-*-linux*’ target continues to use the MIPS II routines. More work on this is expected in future releases.

The built-in __sync_* functions are available on MIPS II and later systems and others that support the ‘ll’, ‘sc’ and ‘sync’ instructions. This can be overridden by passing --with-llsc or --without-llsc when configuring GCC. Since the Linux kernel emulates these instructions if they are missing, the default for ‘mips*-*-linux*’ targets is --with-llsc. The --with-llsc and --without-llsc configure options may be overridden at compile time by passing the -mllsc or -mno-llsc options to the compiler.

MIPS systems check for division by zero (unless -mno-check-zero-division is passed to the compiler) by generating either a conditional trap or a break instruction. Using trap results in smaller code, but is only supported on MIPS II and later. Also, some versions of the Linux kernel have a bug that prevents trap from generating the proper signal (SIGFPE). To enable the use of break, use the --with-divide=breaks configure option when configuring GCC. The default is to use traps on systems that support them.

moxie-*-elf

msp430-*-elf

nds32le-*-elf

nds32be-*-elf

nvptx-*-none

Instead of GNU binutils, you will need to install nvptx-tools. Tell GCC where to find it: --with-build-time-tools=[install-nvptx-tools]/nvptx-none/bin.

You will need newlib 3.0 git revision cd31fbb2aea25f94d7ecedc9db16dfc87ab0c316 or later. It can be automatically built together with GCC. For this, add a symbolic link to nvptx-newlib’s newlib directory to the directory containing the GCC sources.

Use the --disable-sjlj-exceptions and --enable-newlib-io-long-long options when configuring.

powerpc-*-*

You can specify a default version for the -mcpu=cpu_type switch by using the configure option --with-cpu-cpu_type.

powerpc-*-darwin*

Pre-installed versions of Mac OS X may not include any developer tools, meaning that you will not be able to build GCC from source. Tool binaries are available at https://opensource.apple.com.

This version of GCC requires at least cctools-590.36. The cctools-590.36 package referenced from http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-03/msg00507.html will not work on systems older than 10.3.9 (aka darwin7.9.0).

powerpc-*-elf

powerpc*-*-linux-gnu*

powerpc-*-netbsd*

powerpc-*-eabisim

Embedded PowerPC system in big endian mode for use in running under the PSIM simulator.

powerpc-*-eabi

powerpcle-*-elf

powerpcle-*-eabisim

Embedded PowerPC system in little endian mode for use in running under the PSIM simulator.

powerpcle-*-eabi

rl78-*-elf

The Renesas RL78 processor. This configuration is intended for embedded systems.

riscv32-*-elf

The RISC-V RV32 instruction set. This configuration is intended for embedded systems. This (and all other RISC-V) targets are supported upstream as of the binutils 2.28 release.

riscv32-*-linux

The RISC-V RV32 instruction set running GNU/Linux. This (and all other RISC-V) targets are supported upstream as of the binutils 2.28 release.

riscv64-*-elf

The RISC-V RV64 instruction set. This configuration is intended for embedded systems. This (and all other RISC-V) targets are supported upstream as of the binutils 2.28 release.

riscv64-*-linux

The RISC-V RV64 instruction set running GNU/Linux. This (and all other RISC-V) targets are supported upstream as of the binutils 2.28 release.

rx-*-elf

s390-*-linux*

s390x-*-linux*

s390x-ibm-tpf*

zSeries system (64-bit) running TPF. This platform is supported as cross-compilation target only.

*-*-solaris2*

Support for Solaris 9 has been removed in GCC 5. Support for Solaris 8 has been removed in GCC 4.8. Support for Solaris 7 has been removed in GCC 4.6.

Sun does not ship a C compiler with Solaris 2 before Solaris 10, though you can download the Sun Studio compilers for free. In Solaris 10 and 11, GCC 3.4.3 is available as /usr/sfw/bin/gcc. Solaris 11 also provides GCC 4.5.2, 4.7.3, and 4.8.2 as /usr/gcc/4.5/bin/gcc or similar. Alternatively, you can install a pre-built GCC to bootstrap and install GCC. See the binaries page for details.

The Solaris 2 /bin/sh will often fail to configure ‘libstdc++-v3’or ‘boehm-gc’. We therefore recommend using the following initial sequence of commands

% CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/ksh
% export CONFIG_SHELL

and proceed as described in the configure instructions. In addition we strongly recommend specifying an absolute path to invoke srcdir/configure.

Solaris 10 comes with a number of optional OS packages. Some of these are needed to use GCC fully, namely SUNWarc, SUNWbtool, SUNWesu, SUNWhea, SUNWlibm, SUNWsprot, and SUNWtoo. If you did not install all optional packages when installing Solaris 10, you will need to verify that the packages that GCC needs are installed. To check whether an optional package is installed, use the pkginfo command. To add an optional package, use the pkgadd command. For further details, see the Solaris 10 documentation.

Starting with Solaris 11, the package management has changed, so you need to check for system/header, system/linker, and developer/assembler packages. Checking for and installing packages is done with the pkg command now.

Trying to use the linker and other tools in /usr/ucb to install GCC has been observed to cause trouble. For example, the linker may hang indefinitely. The fix is to remove /usr/ucb from your PATH.

The build process works more smoothly with the legacy Sun tools so, if you have /usr/xpg4/bin in your PATH, we recommend that you place /usr/bin before /usr/xpg4/bin for the duration of the build.

We recommend the use of the Solaris assembler or the GNU assembler, in conjunction with the Solaris linker. The GNU as versions included in Solaris 10, from GNU binutils 2.15 (in /usr/sfw/bin/gas), and Solaris 11, from GNU binutils 2.19 or newer (also in /usr/bin/gas and /usr/gnu/bin/as), are known to work. The current version, from GNU binutils 2.29, is known to work as well. Note that your mileage may vary if you use a combination of the GNU tools and the Solaris tools: while the combination GNU as + Sun ld should reasonably work, the reverse combination Sun as + GNU ld may fail to build or cause memory corruption at runtime in some cases for C++ programs. GNU ld usually works as well, although the version included in Solaris 10 cannot be used due to several bugs. Again, the current version (2.29) is known to work, but generally lacks platform specific features, so better stay with Solaris ld. To use the LTO linker plugin (-fuse-linker-plugin) with GNU ld, GNU binutils must be configured with --enable-largefile.

To enable symbol versioning in ‘libstdc++’ with the Solaris linker, you need to have any version of GNU c++filt, which is part of GNU binutils. ‘libstdc++’ symbol versioning will be disabled if no appropriate version is found. Solaris c++filt from the Solaris Studio compilers does not work.

Sun bug 4927647 sometimes causes random spurious testsuite failures related to missing diagnostic output. This bug doesn’t affect GCC itself, rather it is a kernel bug triggered by the expect program which is used only by the GCC testsuite driver. When the bug causes the expect program to miss anticipated output, extra testsuite failures appear.

sparc*-*-*

This section contains general configuration information for all SPARC-based platforms. In addition to reading this section, please read all other sections that match your target.

Newer versions of the GNU Multiple Precision Library (GMP), the MPFR library and the MPC library are known to be miscompiled by earlier versions of GCC on these platforms. We therefore recommend the use of the exact versions of these libraries listed as minimal versions in the prerequisites.

sparc-sun-solaris2*

When GCC is configured to use GNU binutils 2.14 or later, the binaries produced are smaller than the ones produced using Sun’s native tools; this difference is quite significant for binaries containing debugging information.

Starting with Solaris 7, the operating system is capable of executing 64-bit SPARC V9 binaries. GCC 3.1 and later properly supports this; the -m64 option enables 64-bit code generation. However, if all you want is code tuned for the UltraSPARC CPU, you should try the -mtune=ultrasparc option instead, which produces code that, unlike full 64-bit code, can still run on non-UltraSPARC machines.

When configuring the GNU Multiple Precision Library (GMP), the MPFR library or the MPC library on a Solaris 7 or later system, the canonical target triplet must be specified as the build parameter on the configure line. This target triplet can be obtained by invoking ./config.guess in the toplevel source directory of GCC (and not that of GMP or MPFR or MPC). For example on a Solaris 9 system:

% ./configure --build=sparc-sun-solaris2.9 --prefix=xxx

sparc-sun-solaris2.10

There is a bug in older versions of the Sun assembler which breaks thread-local storage (TLS). A typical error message is

ld: fatal: relocation error: R_SPARC_TLS_LE_HIX22: file /var/tmp//ccamPA1v.o:
  symbol <unknown>: bad symbol type SECT: symbol type must be TLS

sparc-*-linux*

sparc64-*-solaris2*

When configuring the GNU Multiple Precision Library (GMP), the MPFR library or the MPC library, the canonical target triplet must be specified as the build parameter on the configure line. For example on a Solaris 9 system:

% ./configure --build=sparc64-sun-solaris2.9 --prefix=xxx

sparcv9-*-solaris2*

c6x-*-*

tilegx-*-linux*

The TILE-Gx processor in little endian mode, running GNU/Linux. This port requires binutils-2.22 or newer.

tilegxbe-*-linux*

The TILE-Gx processor in big endian mode, running GNU/Linux. This port requires binutils-2.23 or newer.

tilepro-*-linux*

The TILEPro processor running GNU/Linux. This port requires binutils-2.22 or newer.

visium-*-elf

*-*-vxworks*

Support for VxWorks is in flux. At present GCC supports only the very recent VxWorks 5.5 (aka Tornado 2.2) release, and only on PowerPC. We welcome patches for other architectures supported by VxWorks 5.5. Support for VxWorks AE would also be welcome; we believe this is merely a matter of writing an appropriate “configlette” (see below). We are not interested in supporting older, a.out or COFF-based, versions of VxWorks in GCC 3.

VxWorks comes with an older version of GCC installed in $WIND_BASE/host; we recommend you do not overwrite it. Choose an installation prefix entirely outside $WIND_BASE. Before running configure, create the directories prefix and prefix/bin. Link or copy the appropriate assembler, linker, etc. into prefix/bin, and set your PATH to include that directory while running both configure and make.

You must give configure the --with-headers=$WIND_BASE/target/h switch so that it can find the VxWorks system headers. Since VxWorks is a cross compilation target only, you must also specify --target=target. configure will attempt to create the directory prefix/target/sys-include and copy files into it; make sure the user running configure has sufficient privilege to do so.

GCC’s exception handling runtime requires a special “configlette” module, contrib/gthr_supp_vxw_5x.c. Follow the instructions in that file to add the module to your kernel build. (Future versions of VxWorks will incorporate this module.)

x86_64-*-*, amd64-*-*

GCC supports the x86-64 architecture implemented by the AMD64 processor (amd64-*-* is an alias for x86_64-*-*) on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. On GNU/Linux the default is a bi-arch compiler which is able to generate both 64-bit x86-64 and 32-bit x86 code (via the -m32 switch).

x86_64-*-solaris2.1[0-9]*

GCC also supports the x86-64 architecture implemented by the AMD64 processor (‘amd64-*-*’ is an alias for ‘x86_64-*-*’) on Solaris 10 or later. Unlike other systems, without special options a bi-arch compiler is built which generates 32-bit code by default, but can generate 64-bit x86-64 code with the -m64 switch. Since GCC 4.7, there is also a configuration that defaults to 64-bit code, but can generate 32-bit code with -m32. To configure and build this way, you have to provide all support libraries like libgmp as 64-bit code, configure with --target=x86_64-pc-solaris2.1x and ‘CC=gcc -m64’.

xtensa*-*-elf

This target is intended for embedded Xtensa systems using the ‘newlib’ C library. It uses ELF but does not support shared objects. Designed-defined instructions specified via the Tensilica Instruction Extension (TIE) language are only supported through inline assembly.

The Xtensa configuration information must be specified prior to building GCC. The include/xtensa-config.h header file contains the configuration information. If you created your own Xtensa configuration with the Xtensa Processor Generator, the downloaded files include a customized copy of this header file, which you can use to replace the default header file.

xtensa*-*-linux*

This target is for Xtensa systems running GNU/Linux. It supports ELF shared objects and the GNU C library (glibc). It also generates position-independent code (PIC) regardless of whether the -fpic or -fPIC options are used. In other respects, this target is the same as the ‘xtensa*-*-elf’ target.

Microsoft Windows

Intel 16-bit versions

The 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, such as Windows 3.1, are not supported.

However, the 32-bit port has limited support for Microsoft Windows 3.11 in the Win32s environment, as a target only. See below.

Intel 32-bit versions

The 32-bit versions of Windows, including Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows XP, and Windows Vista, are supported by several different target platforms. These targets differ in which Windows subsystem they target and which C libraries are used.

Intel 64-bit versions

GCC contains support for x86-64 using the mingw-w64 runtime library, available from http://mingw-w64.org/doku.php. This library should be used with the target triple x86_64-pc-mingw32.

Windows CE

Windows CE is supported as a target only on Hitachi SuperH (sh-wince-pe), and MIPS (mips-wince-pe).

Other Windows Platforms

GCC no longer supports the Windows POSIX subsystem. However, it does support the Interix subsystem. See above.

PW32 (i386-pc-pw32) support was never completed, and the project seems to be inactive. See http://pw32.sourceforge.net/ for more information.

*-*-cygwin

GCC will build under Cygwin without modification; it does not build with Microsoft’s C++ compiler and there are no plans to make it do so.

The Cygwin native compiler can be configured to target any 32-bit x86 cpu architecture desired; the default is i686-pc-cygwin. It should be used with as up-to-date a version of binutils as possible; use either the latest official GNU binutils release in the Cygwin distribution, or version 2.20 or above if building your own.

*-*-mingw32

GCC will build with and support only MinGW runtime 3.12 and later. Earlier versions of headers are incompatible with the new default semantics of extern inline in -std=c99 and -std=gnu99 modes.

Older systems

GCC contains support files for many older (1980s and early 1990s) Unix variants. For the most part, support for these systems has not been deliberately removed, but it has not been maintained for several years and may suffer from bitrot.

Starting with GCC 3.1, each release has a list of “obsoleted” systems. Support for these systems is still present in that release, but configure will fail unless the --enable-obsolete option is given. Unless a maintainer steps forward, support for these systems will be removed from the next release of GCC.

Support for old systems as hosts for GCC can cause problems if the workarounds for compiler, library and operating system bugs affect the cleanliness or maintainability of the rest of GCC. In some cases, to bring GCC up on such a system, if still possible with current GCC, may require first installing an old version of GCC which did work on that system, and using it to compile a more recent GCC, to avoid bugs in the vendor compiler. Old releases of GCC 1 and GCC 2 are available in the old-releases directory on the GCC mirror sites. Header bugs may generally be avoided using fixincludes, but bugs or deficiencies in libraries and the operating system may still cause problems.

Support for older systems as targets for cross-compilation is less problematic than support for them as hosts for GCC; if an enthusiast wishes to make such a target work again (including resurrecting any of the targets that never worked with GCC 2, starting from the last version before they were removed), patches following the usual requirements would be likely to be accepted, since they should not affect the support for more modern targets.

For some systems, old versions of GNU binutils may also be useful, and are available from pub/binutils/old-releases on sourceware.org mirror sites.

Some of the information on specific systems above relates to such older systems, but much of the information about GCC on such systems (which may no longer be applicable to current GCC) is to be found in the GCC texinfo manual.

all ELF targets (SVR4, Solaris 2, etc.)

C++ support is significantly better on ELF targets if you use the GNU linker; duplicate copies of inlines, vtables and template instantiations will be discarded automatically.