GCC toolchain build script

This is a script to build GCC toolchains targeting arm and arm64 devices (primarily Android devices).

Using the script

To build a toolchain, you will need to the following:

A Linux distribution (the script has been tested on Ubuntu 17.04 and Arch Linux)
A decent processor and RAM (i5 and 8GB of RAM or more is preferred)
Core developer packages
- For Arch: the base-devel package should be enough
- For Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install flex bison ncurses-dev texinfo gcc gperf patch libtool automake g++ libncurses5-dev gawk subversion expat libexpat1-dev python-all-dev binutils-dev libgcc1:i386 bc libcloog-isl-dev libcap-dev autoconf libgmp-dev build-essential gcc-multilib g++-multilib pkg-config libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev

Once you have set up your environment, run the following:

git clone https://github.com/nathanchance/build-tools-gcc
cd build-tools-gcc
bash build -h

The printout will show you how to run the script. A fuller explananation of the parameters is below

Parameters

NOTE: Multiple parameters can and will almost always be used. See examples below.

-a | --arm: This allows the user to build an arm toolchain, instead of an arm64 toolchain.
-b | --build: Build the toolchain. This parameter MUST be added for the toolchain to build if you add any parameters. Running just bash build will use this.
-c | --clean: Clean up from a previous build. Do this after the first download after every build.
-d | --download: Downloads the necessary components to compile. This MUST be added before building for the first time.
-g | --gz: Use GZIP compression to zip toolchain (Faster (de)compression, larger file)
-h | --help: Run the help menu then exits. Use this whenever you forget how to run the script.
-l | --linaro: Build a Linaro toolchain from the latest release branch, instead of the standard GNU source.
-nt | --no-tmpfs: Do not mount the build directories on tmpfs (use this if you don't have a lot of RAM)
-u | --update: This will update the git repos that were downloaded. Recommended before any build.

Example commands:

# Build a Linaro toolchain for the first time
# Download components, checkout Linaro, then build
bash build -d -l -b

# Build a GNU toolchain after a few compilations
# Update sources, clean previous compilation, then build
bash build -u -c -b

If you want to switch between GNU and Linaro builds, ALWAYS run update so that it checks out the proper branch.

After compilation

Once it is done building, you will see a tar.xz or tar.gz file (depending on if you passed -g or not). Move that into the directory of your choosing and run the following command:

tar -xvf <toolchain_name>.tar.xz --strip-components=1

Or (if GZIP)

tar -xvzf <toolchain_name>.tar.gz --strip-components=1

After that, point your cross compiler to the proper file and compile! This is an easy shortcut for kernels (when run in the directory you extracted the toolchain in):

# for arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=$(pwd)/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-

# for arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=$(pwd)/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-

Pull requests/issues

If you have any issues with this script, feel free to open an issue!

Pull requests are more than welcome as well. However, I will only accept a particular coding style:

All variables are uppercased and use curly braces: ${VARIABLE} instead of $variable
Four spaces for indents
All conditions must be one line to start: if [[ conditions ]]; then
Double brackets and single equal sign for string comparisons in if blocks: if [[ ${VARIABLE} = "yes" ]]; then

Credits/thanks

USBHost: For the initial script
frap129: For some modifications to update the script/components
MSF-Jarvis: For testing the arm option