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xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC v11.2.1-1.2 released

· 4 min read
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)

Version 11.2.1-1.2 is a maintenance release; it brings back support for parsing XML files in GDB, allowing it to auto-configure on target capabilities when connecting to J-Link GDB server and fixes libgcov.a, which resulted empty in the previous release.

The xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of GNU AArch64 Embedded Toolchain.

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).

Raspberry Pi

The main targets for the GNU/Linux Arm binaries are the Raspberry Pi class devices (armv7l and aarch64; armv6 is not supported).

Download​

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites​

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install​

The full details of installing the xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC on various platforms are presented in the Install Guide.

Compliance​

The xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC generally follows the official Arm Embedded GCC releases.

The current version is based on:

  • GNU AArch64 Embedded Toolchain release 11.2-2022.02 from February 15, 2022 and uses the same sources. It includes:
    • GCC 11.2.1
    • binutils 2.37
    • newlib 4.1.0
    • GDB 11.2

Supported libraries​

The supported libraries are:

$ aarch64-none-elf-gcc -print-multi-lib
.;
ilp32;@mabi=ilp32

Changes​

Compared to the Arm version, there should be no functional changes.

XML parsing in GDB​

Some advanced GDB servers, like the one provided with SEGGER J-Link, are capable of passing an XML with the target capabilities to the GDB client. For unknown reasons, the Arm toolchain distribution came without XML parsing support. The xPack distribution brings back support for XML parsing and full integration with the SEGGER J-Link GDB server.

Python​

Support for Python scripting was added to GDB. This distribution provides a separate binary, aarch64-none-elf-gdb-py3 with support for Python 3.10.

The Python 3 run-time is included, so GDB does not need any version of Python to be installed, and is insensitive to the presence of other versions.

Text User Interface (TUI)​

Support for TUI was added to GDB. The ncurses library was added to the distribution.

note

TUI is not available on Windows

No Guile​

Due to the difficulties of building standalone Guile libraries on all platforms, support for Guile scripting in GDB is currently not available.

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • none

Documentation​

The original GNU GCC documentation is available online.

Build​

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER page.

CI tests​

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests​

The binaries were tested on a variety of platforms, but mainly to check the integrity of the build, not the compiler functionality.

Checksums​

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

13790cf505cda92e12d5da01ac916fdecf4d724b8497828d446b7bc494d13a6b
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

d32aa91694e5fea3e721fe9269a74f05887cf94c97636f9ccd4ae3ecfd034fa5
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

b49737e1ec729fe069cfa33915a209a8a4c155a69d096e92b3e2dc8820ff164b
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-linux-arm.tar.gz

9eb0b95e8267e7d86dc18cad44744f984ef8b1c50df030c854abd5e5e99a3c68
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

e14ac6851317da56d192757e028460afc64b998c446d97b3761873a2b91058d8
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz

78deba2be085002cb31c80591792264e250aee9ae6d4d996871679781db16706
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.2.1-1.2-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit Intel Linux and Intel Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

Linux minimum requirements​

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics​

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.