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xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC v11.3.1-1.1 released

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

Version 11.3.1-1.1 is a new release; it follows the upstream Arm 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 (x64), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

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 easiest way to install this specific version, is by using xpm:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc@11.3.1-1.1.1 -verbose

Comprehensive instructions for installing xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC on different platforms can be found 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 11.3.Rel1 from August 8, 2022 and uses the same sources. It includes:
    • GCC 11.3.1
    • binutils 2.38
    • newlib 4.1.0
    • GDB 12.1

Supported libraries​

The supported libraries are:

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

Changes​

Compared to the official 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​

  • an issue with the build of GDB resulted in an aarch64-none-elf-as which does not run properly on Wine; fixed in v11.3.1-1.2.

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:

7ddb902469db43160db84c59f97ff60783b3e7b75ec1d98442e259b5e03c3201
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

26a0a9d9098d58c758aceab30a6ac00d62d9c5d9a7b32b6494b99338c8457396
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

37d170e50ca785d5c885d77f96f0eeb3d471e3e88e6b5e36770d2f0467c873f0
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-linux-arm.tar.gz

81f610aa047f669cfcb9701737b2aed6a0956df822bdab813b1d1ca0182985c6
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

60c9d00697981f7e721f81df69a830b4c9d3da52f3cb53f8ae86420faa808864
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-linux-x64.tar.gz

c63dbea1fcd6a303fde1359e51d1819064a47ac2a3ed7cd353b554a22f3ab310
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-11.3.1-1.1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/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.