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xPack Windows Build Tools v4.4.0-1 released

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

DEPRECATED: Version 4.4.0-1 is a new release of the xPack Windows Build Tools package, following the make release.

The xPack Windows Build Tools is a standalone Windows binary distribution of GNU make and a few other tools required by the Eclipse Embedded CDT (formerly GNU MCU/ARM Eclipse) project, but the binaries can also be used in generic build environments.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64 and x86).

Deprecated​

Use v4.4.1-2.

Download​

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites​

  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10

Install​

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

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/windows-build-tools@4.4.0-1.1 --verbose

The full details of installing the xPack Windows Build Tools can be found in the Install Guide.

Compliance​

The xPack Windows Build Tools uses programs from other projects.

The current version is based on:

Changes​

There are no functional changes from original projects.

Bug fixes​

  • the BusyBox code includes a patch around the UCRT bug that affects spawning sub-processes.

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • starting with mid 2023, BusyBox included a make applet, which is preferred to GNU make; unfortunately it does not provides the full functionality and most builds fail; this applet was disabled in v4.4.1-2.

Documentation​

  • none

Build​

The binaries 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 testes on Windows 10 Pro 32/64-bit.

Install the package with xpm.

The simple test, consists in starting the binary.

.../xpack-windows-build-tools-4.4.0-1/bin/make --version

A more elaborate test would be to run an Eclipse build.

Checksums​

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

f1209010daa21e040cc5bd455ea4736b28d965ab83f024d3e978c0853c192978
xpack-windows-build-tools-4.4.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 Windows was dropped in 2022.

Download analytics​

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