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xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC v10.3.1-2.3 released

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

Version 10.3.1-2.3 is a maintenance release; it adds support for Apple Silicon and uses the latest build scripts.

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

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64 and x86), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64 and x86, 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​

  • x86/x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.15 or higher (like Ubuntu 12 or later, Debian 8 or later, RedHat/CentOS 7 later, Fedora 20 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.23 or higher (like Ubuntu 16 or later, Debian 9 or later, RedHat/CentOS 8 or later, Fedora 24 or later, etc)
  • x86/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/arm-none-eabi-gcc@10.3.1-2.3.1 --verbose

Comprehensive instructions for installing xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC on different platforms can be found in the Install Guide.

Compliance​

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

The current version is based on:

  • GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain release 10.3-2021.10 from October 21, 2021 and uses the gcc-arm-none-eabi-10.3-2021.10-src.tar.bz2 source invariant. It includes:
    • GCC 10.3.1
    • binutils 2.36
    • newlib 4.1.0
    • GDB 10.2

For more details see the original Arm release text files:

  • distro-info/arm-readme.txt
  • distro-info/arm-release.txt

Supported libraries​

The supported libraries are:

$ arm-none-eabi-gcc -print-multi-lib
.;
arm/v5te/softfp;@marm@march=armv5te+fp@mfloat-abi=softfp
arm/v5te/hard;@marm@march=armv5te+fp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/nofp;@mthumb@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv7@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7+fp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7+fp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7+fp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7+fp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v7-r+fp.sp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7-r+fp.sp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7-r+fp.sp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7-r+fp.sp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v6-m/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv6s-m@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7-m/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv7-m@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7e-m/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv7e-m@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7e-m+fp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7e-m+fp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7e-m+fp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7e-m+fp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v7e-m+dp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7e-m+fp.dp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7e-m+dp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7e-m+fp.dp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v8-m.base/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.base@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v8-m.main/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.main@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v8-m.main+fp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.main+fp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v8-m.main+fp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.main+fp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v8-m.main+dp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.main+fp.dp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v8-m.main+dp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv8-m.main+fp.dp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v8.1-m.main+mve/hard;@mthumb@march=armv8.1-m.main+mve@mfloat-abi=hard

Changes​

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

Python​

Support for Python scripting was added to GDB. This distribution provides a separate binary, arm-none-eabi-gdb-py3 with support for Python 3.7.

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.

Support for Python 2 was discontinued.

Text User Interface (TUI)​

Support for TUI was added to GDB. The ncurses library (v6.2) was added to the distribution.

note

TUI is not available on Windows

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • none

Documentation​

The original documentation is available in the share/doc folder.

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:

a207301fb6c136f661a09024eb49424adf74cbc952a4cff150dfc7927206ab1a
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-darwin-x64.tar.gz

cf152bb008697143b802a85fffffc2c9b562bc1e6d0984ad02d4ee1f1bb91790
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-linux-arm.tar.gz

6e3ee605079ba084836cd057022e16c28605f4068042cd14397976b836ea1a21
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-linux-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-linux-ia32.tar.gz

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xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-linux-x64.tar.gz

c98fc443d7ef3524d42a40b6635e8b99c736efac77729f8a70463bb9ba19bc85
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-win32-ia32.zip

169744f784fb04ae10c60bc6a2cd69cff93cff0bf5657e9333776036f347f9c4
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-10.3.1-2.3-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows will most probably be dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux 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 will most probably be dropped in 2022, and the minimum requirement will be raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics​

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