RISC-V GNU Compiler Toolchain

This is the RISC-V C and C++ cross-compiler. It supports two build modes: a generic ELF/Newlib toolchain and a more sophisticated Linux-ELF/glibc toolchain.

Getting the sources

This repository uses submodules. You need the --recursive option to fetch the submodules automatically

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/riscv/riscv-gnu-toolchain

Alternatively :

$ git clone https://github.com/riscv/riscv-gnu-toolchain
$ cd riscv-gnu-toolchain
$ git submodule update --init --recursive

Prerequisites

Several standard packages are needed to build the toolchain. On Ubuntu, executing the following command should suffice:

$ sudo apt-get install autoconf automake autotools-dev curl python3 libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev libgmp-dev gawk build-essential bison flex texinfo gperf libtool patchutils bc zlib1g-dev libexpat-dev

On Fedora/CentOS/RHEL OS, executing the following command should suffice:

$ sudo yum install autoconf automake python3 libmpc-devel mpfr-devel gmp-devel gawk  bison flex texinfo patchutils gcc gcc-c++ zlib-devel expat-devel

On OS X, you can use Homebrew to install the dependencies:

$ brew install python3 gawk gnu-sed gmp mpfr libmpc isl zlib expat

To build the glibc (Linux) on OS X, you will need to build within a case-sensitive file system. The simplest approach is to create and mount a new disk image with a case sensitive format. Make sure that the mount point does not contain spaces. This is not necessary to build newlib or gcc itself on OS X.

This process will start by downloading about 200 MiB of upstream sources, then will patch, build, and install the toolchain. If a local cache of the upstream sources exists in $(DISTDIR), it will be used; the default location is /var/cache/distfiles. Your computer will need about 8 GiB of disk space to complete the process.

Installation (Newlib)

To build the Newlib cross-compiler, pick an install path. If you choose, say, /opt/riscv, then add /opt/riscv/bin to your PATH now. Then, simply run the following command:

./configure --prefix=/opt/riscv
make

You should now be able to use riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc and its cousins.

Installation (Linux)

To build the Linux cross-compiler, pick an install path. If you choose, say, /opt/riscv, then add /opt/riscv/bin to your PATH now. Then, simply run the following command:

./configure --prefix=/opt/riscv
make linux

The build defaults to targetting RV64GC (64-bit), even on a 32-bit build environment. To build the 32-bit RV32GC toolchain, use:

./configure --prefix=/opt/riscv --with-arch=rv32gc --with-abi=ilp32d
make linux

Supported architectures are rv32i or rv64i plus standard extensions (a)tomics, (m)ultiplication and division, (f)loat, (d)ouble, or (g)eneral for MAFD.

Supported ABIs are ilp32 (32-bit soft-float), ilp32d (32-bit hard-float), ilp32f (32-bit with single-precision in registers and double in memory, niche use only), lp64 lp64f lp64d (same but with 64-bit long and pointers).

Installation (Linux multilib)

To build the Linux cross-compiler with support for both 32-bit and 64-bit, run the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/opt/riscv --enable-multilib
make linux

The multilib compiler will have the prefix riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-, but will be able to target both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Troubleshooting Build Problems

Builds work best if installing into an empty directory. If you build a hard-float toolchain and then try to build a soft-float toolchain with the same --prefix directory, then the build scripts may get confused and exit with a linker error complaining that hard float code can't be linked with soft float code. Removing the existing toolchain first, or using a different prefix for the second build, avoids the problem. It is OK to build one newlib and one linux toolchain with the same prefix. But you should avoid building two newlib or two linux toolchains with the same prefix.

If building a linux toolchain on a MacOS system, or on a Windows system using the Linux subsystem or cygwin, you must ensure that the filesystem is case-sensitive. A build on a case-insensitive filesystem will fail when building glibc because *.os and *.oS files will clobber each other during the build eventually resulting in confusing link errors.

Centos (and RHEL) provide old GNU tools versions that may be too old to build a RISC-V toolchain. There is an alternate toolset provided that includes current versions of the GNU tools. This is the devtoolset provided as part of the Software Collection service. For more info, see the devtoolset-7 URL. There are various versions of the devtoolset that are available, so you can also try other versions of it, but we have at least one report that devtoolset-7 works.

Advanced Options

There are a number of additional options that may be passed to configure. See './configure --help' for more details.

Test Suite

The DejaGnu test suite has been ported to RISC-V. This can run with GDB simulator for elf toolchain or Qemu for linux toolchain, and GDB simulator doesn't support floating-point. To test GCC, run the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$RISCV --disable-linux --with-arch=rv64ima # or --with-arch=rv32ima
make newlib
make report-newlib

./configure --prefix=$RISCV
make linux
make report-linux