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xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC v12.2.1-1.2 released

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

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

The xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of Arm GNU 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/arm-none-eabi-gcc@12.2.1-1.2.1 -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 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:

$ 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/v7-a/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv7-a@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v7-a+fp/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7-a+fp@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7-a+fp/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7-a+fp@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v7-a+simd/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7-a+simd@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7-a+simd/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7-a+simd@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v7ve+simd/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv7ve+simd@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v7ve+simd/hard;@mthumb@march=armv7ve+simd@mfloat-abi=hard
thumb/v8-a/nofp;@mthumb@march=armv8-a@mfloat-abi=soft
thumb/v8-a+simd/softfp;@mthumb@march=armv8-a+simd@mfloat-abi=softfp
thumb/v8-a+simd/hard;@mthumb@march=armv8-a+simd@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.

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, arm-none-eabi-gdb-py3 with support for Python 3.11.4.

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 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:

15047b5ee4ab6e739401ffcf1238003f67d83129919d81c0c61989be09d95e62
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

5b4d2d3c6b258b275eee06a3437b9f04480957e8415c6c9f00b56a7cc5f2c01f
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

92eee346b6672776169143154c931c3a5779fd171c1976d495e7eb31796692d5
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-arm.tar.gz

dbf5e36b20f236ead98c6c24daaeafb5ed8b9a7be76895f5e0c7b79cb2b90073
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

65b52009ff1b7f22f5e030cc04e17e5e7d7f2436a62488aca905062a71d3944c
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz

5662a2d95bd5b28d24797709864fa8e1379a3bd103112f3c96a6c16db1e2e44a
xpack-arm-none-eabi-gcc-12.2.1-1.2-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.