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xPack GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC v12.5.0-1 released

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

Version 12.5.0-1.1 is a new release; it follows the GNU GCC release.

The xPack GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of GNU GCC for embedded RISC-V.

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

Raspberry Pi

The main targets for the GNU/Linux Arm binaries are the Raspberry Pi class devices (aarch64 only; armv6 and armv7l are no longer supported).

Download​

The binary files can be downloaded automatically with xpm or manually from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites​

  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11
  • x64 macOS: 11.0 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.0 or later
  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.28 or higher (like Ubuntu 20 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.28 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 20 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)

Install​

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

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/riscv-none-elf-gcc@12.5.0-1.1 -verbose

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

Compliance​

The xPack GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC uses the official sources, with no functional changes:

  • GCC 12.5.0
  • binutils 2.45
  • newlib 4.5.0
  • gdb 16.3
  • python 3.13.7

Supported libraries​

The default architecture/ABI pair is rv32imac/ilp32.

The other supported libraries are:

$ riscv-none-elf-gcc -print-multi-lib
.;
rv32e/ilp32e;@march=rv32e@mabi=ilp32e
rv32ec/ilp32e;@march=rv32ec@mabi=ilp32e
rv32ea/ilp32e;@march=rv32ea@mabi=ilp32e
rv32em/ilp32e;@march=rv32em@mabi=ilp32e
rv32eac/ilp32e;@march=rv32eac@mabi=ilp32e
rv32emac/ilp32e;@march=rv32emac@mabi=ilp32e
rv32i/ilp32;@march=rv32i@mabi=ilp32
rv32ia/ilp32;@march=rv32ia@mabi=ilp32
rv32im/ilp32;@march=rv32im@mabi=ilp32
rv32imc/ilp32;@march=rv32imc@mabi=ilp32
rv32if_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32if_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32ifd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32ifd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32iaf_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32iaf_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32iafd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32iafd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32imf_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imf_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imfd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imfd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32iac/ilp32;@march=rv32iac@mabi=ilp32
rv32imafc_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imafc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imafdc_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imafdc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv64i/lp64;@march=rv64i@mabi=lp64
rv64ia/lp64;@march=rv64ia@mabi=lp64
rv64im/lp64;@march=rv64im@mabi=lp64
rv64if_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64if_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64ifd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64ifd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64iaf_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64iaf_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64iafd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64iafd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64imf_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imf_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64iac/lp64;@march=rv64iac@mabi=lp64
rv64imac/lp64;@march=rv64imac@mabi=lp64
rv64imafc_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imafc_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64imafdc_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64imafdc_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
note

This list is inspired by the Debian riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc supported multi-libs.

Changes​

Compared to the upstream GNU release, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • in certain conditions, on Apple Silicon MacOS, the riscv-none-elf-gdb debugger may crash with a message like Fatal signal: Abort trap: 6. Other platforms are not affected. The problem needs further investigation.

Documentation​

The original GNU Arm Embedded GCC documentation is available from the GCC online documentation web site.

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.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the Maintainer Info 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:

47331601bd7c87cf6d0b7090f381b184773e8e55113106cacbc401f4b7c7cd99
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

a77eab69083b77cb5abfef7335093f16fc08bda569365d4699670de44b85d3d9
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

d508790fc3acc5ee801b9e63fd0f5aa622ec9d95472157e65e7c59861fb8f053
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

624fae17fb5dfaa0d8a9f8b345c9831cca9e06322a34254342a19eea61915e82
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

e23444e1058bac566f1f19f08fc27c06e3281aa5adc01586b197202fc3e6522b
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Folders hierarchy​

After install, the package creates a hierarchy of folders like the following (only the first two depth levels are shown):

C:> tree /f %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\xPacks\@xpack-dev-tools\riscv-none-elf-gcc\12.5.0-1.1\.content
Folder PATH listing
Volume serial number is B02D-925C
├── README.md
├── bin
│   ├── DLLs
│   ├── libgcc_s_seh-1.dll
│   ├── libgmp-10.dll
│   ├── libmpc-3.dll
│   ├── libmpfr-6.dll
│   ├── libncursesw6.dll
│   ├── libstdc++-6.dll
│   ├── libzstd.dll
│   ├── python313.dll
│   ├── python313.zip
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-addr2line.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-ar.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-as.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-c++.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-c++filt.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-cpp.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-elfedit.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-g++.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.5.0.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcc-ar.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcc-nm.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcc-ranlib.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcc.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcov-dump.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcov-tool.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gcov.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gdb-add-index
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gdb-add-index-py3
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gdb-py3.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gdb.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gfortran.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gprof.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gstack
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-gstack-py3
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-ld.bfd.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-ld.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-lto-dump.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-nm.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-objcopy.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-objdump.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-ranlib.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-readelf.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-size.exe
│   ├── riscv-none-elf-strings.exe
│   └── riscv-none-elf-strip.exe
├── distro-info
│   └── licenses
├── include
│   ├── gdb
│   ├── gmp.h
│   ├── gmpxx.h
│   ├── iconv.h
│   ├── isl
│   ├── libcharset.h
│   ├── localcharset.h
│   ├── lzma
│   ├── lzma.h
│   ├── mpc.h
│   ├── mpf2mpfr.h
│   ├── mpfr.h
│   ├── ncursesw
│   ├── zconf.h
│   ├── zdict.h
│   ├── zlib.h
│   ├── zstd.h
│   └── zstd_errors.h
├── lib
│   ├── bfd-plugins
│   ├── cmake
│   ├── gcc
│   ├── libcharset.a
│   ├── libformw.a
│   ├── libgmp.a
│   ├── libgmpxx.a
│   ├── libiconv.a
│   ├── libisl.a
│   ├── libisl.so.23.4.0-gdb.py
│   ├── liblzma.a
│   ├── libmenuw.a
│   ├── libmpc.a
│   ├── libmpfr.a
│   ├── libncurses++w.a
│   ├── libncursesw.a
│   ├── libpanelw.a
│   ├── libz.a
│   ├── libzstd.a
│   ├── libzstd.so.1.5.7
│   ├── pkgconfig
│   └── texi2any
├── libexec
│   └── gcc
├── riscv-none-elf
│   ├── bin
│   ├── include
│   ├── lib
│   └── share
└── share
  ├── doc
  ├── gcc-12.5.0
  ├── info
  ├── man
  ├── texi2any
  └── texinfo

29 directories, 76 files

Deprecation notices​

GNU/Linux minimum requirements​

The minimum requirement is GLIBC 2.28, available starting with Ubuntu 20, Debian 10 and RedHat 8. Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022. Support for Ubuntu 18 was dropped in 2025.

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x64 GNU/Linux and x64 Windows was dropped in 2022 and for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux in 2025.

Pre-deprecation notice for x64 macOS​

Apple has discontinued support for the x64 (Intel) architecture. GitHub will no longer support this architecture on macOS after the macOS 15 runner image is retired in November 2027; building and testing x64 macOS binaries will become more difficult, requiring a self-hosted runner, and cannot be guaranteed in the long term.

You should begin migrating your projects to arm64-based (Apple Silicon) binaries to prepare for this possible deprecation.

Analytics​

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