Re: 64-bit ELF Cross Compiler

On 18 Jul 2000 13:07:52 -0400, Mike S <heckler@my-deja.com> wrote:


Mike> I am in need of a compiler that produces 64-bit Elf/Dwarf
Mike> binaries, but have had a difficult time getting one to work.
Mike> Have any of you had any success getting such an animal working?


Mike> I have some experience getting normal compilers to build, but no
Mike> experience with cross compilers.


Mike,


You didn't say what's your target platform: MIPS, Alpha, SPARC or
something else?


GCC can be used as a fairly reliable cross-compiler. We've been using
an cross-compiler for MIPS R4K (ELF64/ELF32) for quite a while and
also had limited success with an Alpha cross-compiler. What you want
is to cross compile binutils *and* gcc. There are building
instructions distributed in the tarballs, so I won't repeat them here.
There are a few catches (and a lot of bugs) to watch for, though:


- cross-compiling to Alpha on 32 bit hosts often seems to generate
wrong code. I think you should do wise to consider Alpha as a "broken"
cross- compalition target.


- cross-compiling to 64bit MIPS works fine, but debugging symbols
aren't generated correctly. I think someone here was working on this,
so I might get you to email him if you're interested.


- the 64bit MIPS (and possibly others) GNU linker is completely broken
(it patches pointers to almost random values.) We're using
"mungilink", a a locally-developed, somewhat specialized linker for
SASOS executables, but it also works well for normal linking as long
as your target is ELF32, ELF64 or raw binary.


Hope that's of some use.


While we're on the topic, has anyone on the list had any success with
GCC cross-compiling Alpha on a 32 bit host? Also, I would very much
like to hear of experiences people had using GCC on SPARC v9. I've
heard rumours that it currently generates broken code, and would
rather avoid discovering this by spending hours in front of an
assembler listing, so I'm staying clear of sparc64 GCC untill I hear
otherwise.


Pat.


Patryk Zadarnowski University of New South Wales
<pat@jantar.org> School of Computer Science and Engineering

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