The history of xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC

April 2022

The project was created in April 2022, following Arm's reorganization of the Arm GNU Toolchain which resulted in a family of toolchains for bare metal AArch64 and AArch32 targets.

The build scripts were initially a copy/paste of the arm-none-eabi-gcc-xpack project.

Both aarch64-none-elf and arm-none-eabi toolchains follow the Arm releases schedule (which are usually one major version behind the GNU releases), utilizing the same sources and similar build configurations as the official Arm releases. They are designed to be fully compatible with the official Arm GNU Toolchains.

May 2022

The first xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC release was v11.2.1-1.1.

Support for parsing XML files in GDB was added (in v11.2.1-1.2).

December 2022

The project received a significant update by transitioning the build scripts from the unwieldy monolithic XBB Docker images to the more flexible and modular xpm packages. XBB version 5.0.0 marked a major milestone for the xPack project, as it was the first self-sustained release. This version enabled the creation of new binary packages utilising existing binary packages, eliminating the need for bespoke Docker images or other compiled tools.

August 2024

The project underwent comprehensive restructuring. To streamline the top-level package.json by presenting only user-related definitions whilst concealing build-related ones, all build-related files were relocated to the build-assets folder. Furthermore, the development Git branch was renamed to xpack-development for enhanced clarity.

Support for ld.gold was added (in v13.3.1-1.1).

Support for TUI in GDB was added on Windows too (in v13.3.1-1.1).