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xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC v12.2.1-1.2 released

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

Version 12.2.1-1.2 is a new release; it follows the upstream Arm release.

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

The current version is based on:

  • Arm GNU Toolchain release 12.2.Rel1 from December 22, 2022 and uses the same sources. It includes:
    • GCC 12.2.1
    • binutils 2.39
    • newlib 4.2.0
    • GDB 12.1

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 3.11.1.

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:

7f1a9f1092c87109016147e8faa0be373aeee050ccfa1ae4b57c22702253ae4d
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

79de1b8b5833e78b28405bad0fa190178bc882e62743c86b789ff1333eb36893
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

357414dc624c5a80e2bcd531dc48778d0cd3cbc6c05d8946342e45331cec4835
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-arm.tar.gz

7f50183a26c409d6c15fc785144d665b2d070479796862c5f6cd2970c486e0ae
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

a908ed7722469d15e0ccd453d13b8613809e434091690a794d1f4db6d386f111
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz

6a236ead2d161e9bc4dfb0294272d07f1e0473467033bb022be34c7ad4d45680
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-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.