how to cross-compile for the arm

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1. Crosstool
   1. For the inpatient
2. Buildroot

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Crosstool

Use this if you already have Linux installed in the board but you want to compile software for it.

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For the inpatient

Download from http://kegel.com/crosstool/#download

We tried with http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.42.tar.gz.

Uncompress it and then create the build script.

#!/bin/sh
set -ex

TARBALLS_DIR=$HOME/downloads
RESULT_TOP=$HOME/crosstool
GCC_LANGUAGES="c,c++"
PARALLELMFLAGS="-j2"
GDB_DIR=gdb-6.5

export GCC_LANGUAGES PARALLELMFLAGS TARBALLS_DIR  RESULT_TOP GDB_DIR

mkdir -p $RESULT_TOP


# Create the toolchain. This will take a lot of time. 
# Add --gdb to the next line if you are going to use GDB!
eval `cat arm-softfloat.dat gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6.dat`  sh all.sh --notest
echo Done.

Run it and wait. The elapsed time will depend on the bandwidth available and the speed of the host computer.

So, be patient.

When the script finishes, the toolchain will be in $HOME/crosstool.

You might want to define the crossmake alias to make your file easier. For instance:

 $ export PATH=$HOME/crosstool/gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6/arm-softfloat-linux-gnu/bin/:$PATH
 $ alias crossmake='make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-softfloat-linux-gnu- '

You might want to use ccache. In Debian, just aptitude install ccache. You will need to do something like:

alias crossmake='nice make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE="ccache arm-softfloat-linux-gnu-" '

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Buildroot

You could also use a buildroot, that allows you to create an ISO image to be mounted with a minimal linux system that uses uClibc and BusyBox.

Here is the configuration for the buildroot. It works with the ECB_AT91 V1 and V2.