Failed to build GNU toolchain and newlib 4.4 for ARM from scratch in X86 Linux

Question

I am working on an embedded RTOS on ARM, now I am going to build the GNU toolchain for the ARM in my X86 Linux host (ubuntu-20.04), so I did followings by referring to https://gnutoolchains.com/building/

1. Download binutils-2.42.tar.gz
2. Download gcc-11.3.0.tar.gz
3. Download newlib-4.4.0-20231231
4. Download mpc-1.0.3.tar.gz
5. Download mpfr-3.1.6.tar.bz2
6. Download gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
7. Download gdb-14.1.tar.gz

Put and extract them into /home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/, as follows,

@t-VirtualBox:~/testmnt/armtoolchain$ ls -l
total 442348
drwxrwx--- 20 t t 4096 3月 21 09:11 binutils-2.42
drwxrwx--- 13 t t 4096 3月 23 18:06 binutils-2.42-build
-rwxrwx--- 1 t t 51892456 1月 29 23:22 binutils-2.42.tar.gz
drwxrwx--- 38 t t 4096 4月 21 2022 gcc-11.3.0
drwxrwx--- 16 t t 4096 3月 23 19:56 gcc-11.3.0-build
-rwxrwx--- 1 t t 143527306 4月 21 2022 gcc-11.3.0.tar.gz
drwxrwxr-x 23 t t 4096 3月 22 12:47 gdb-14.1
drwxrwxr-x 17 t t 4096 3月 22 12:53 gdb-14.1-build
-rw-rw-r-- 1 t t 41058403 12月 3 13:39 gdb-14.1.tar.gz
drwxrwx--- 16 t t 4096 3月 21 10:37 gmp-4.3.2
-rwxrwx--- 1 t t 1897483 2月 1 2010 gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
drwxrwx--- 6 t t 4096 3月 21 10:42 mpc-1.0.3
-rwxrwx--- 1 t t 669925 4月 28 2016 mpc-1.0.3.tar.gz
drwxrwx--- 9 t t 4096 3月 21 10:46 mpfr-3.1.6
-rwxrwx--- 1 t t 1287202 9月 7 2017 mpfr-3.1.6.tar.bz2
drwxrwx--- 9 t t 4096 3月 22 08:05 newlib-4.4.0.20231231
drwxrwxr-x 4 t t 4096 3月 22 14:27 newlib-4.4.0.20231231-build
drwxrwx--- 6 t t 4096 3月 23 18:07 out

I firstly configured and built gmp, mpc, and mpfr, and installed them into /usr/local/lib/

Then, I configured and built binutils as follows,

cd binutils-2.42-build/
../binutils-2.42/configure -target arm-test-eabi --prefix /home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out/
make install-strip

Then, I configured and built gcc as follows,

cd gcc-11.3.0-build/
../gcc-11.3.0/configure --target=arm-test-eabi --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix /home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out --enable-languages=c,c++ --enable-plugins --disable-decimal-float --disable-libffi --disable-libgomp --disable-libmudflap --disable-libquadmath --disable-libssp --disable-libstdcxx-pch --disable-nls --disable-shared --enable-threads=posix --disable-tls --with-gnu-as --with-gnu-ld --with-newlib --with-headers=yes --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --with-host-libstdcxx='-static-libgcc -Wl,-Bstatic,-lstdc++,-Bdynamic -lm' --with-multilib-list=aprofile,rmprofile --with-headers=/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/newlib-4.4.0.20231231/newlib/libc/include --with-pkgversion='GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain 11.3.0'
make -j12

Then, I hit the following errors.

make[4]: Entering directory '/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/gcc-11.3.0-build/arm-test-eabi/arm/v5te/softfp/libgcc'
# If this is the top-level multilib, build all the other
# multilibs.
/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/gcc-11.3.0-build/./gcc/xgcc -B/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/gcc-11.3.0-build/./gcc/ -B/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out/arm-test-eabi/bin/ -B/home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out/arm-test-eabi/lib/ -isystem /home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out/arm-test-eabi/include -isystem /home/t/testmnt/armtoolchain/out/arm-test-eabi/sys-include -g -O2 -marm -march=armv5te+fp -mfloat-abi=softfp -O2 -g -O2 -DIN_GCC -DCROSS_DIRECTORY_STRUCTURE -W -Wall -Wno-narrowing -Wwrite-strings -Wcast-qual -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wold-style-definition -isystem ./include -fno-inline -g -DIN_LIBGCC2 -fbuilding-libgcc -fno-stack-protector -fno-inline -I. -I. -I../../../../.././gcc -I../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc -I../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/. -I../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/../gcc -I../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/../include -o emutls.o -MT emutls.o -MD -MP -MF emutls.dep -fexceptions -c ../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/emutls.c -fvisibility=hidden -DHIDE_EXPORTS
In file included from ../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/gthr.h:148,
 from ../../../../../../gcc-11.3.0/libgcc/emutls.c:31:
./gthr-default.h:102:9: error: 'pthread_once' undeclared here (not in a function); did you mean 'pthread_once_t'?
 102 | __gthrw(pthread_once)
 | ^~~~~~~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:90:19: note: in definition of macro '__gthrw2'
 90 | static __typeof(type) name \
 | ^~~~
./gthr-default.h:102:1: note: in expansion of macro '__gthrw'
 102 | __gthrw(pthread_once)
 | ^~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:103:9: error: 'pthread_getspecific' undeclared here (not in a function)
 103 | __gthrw(pthread_getspecific)
 | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:90:19: note: in definition of macro '__gthrw2'
 90 | static __typeof(type) name \
 | ^~~~
./gthr-default.h:103:1: note: in expansion of macro '__gthrw'
 103 | __gthrw(pthread_getspecific)
 | ^~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:104:9: error: 'pthread_setspecific' undeclared here (not in a function)
 104 | __gthrw(pthread_setspecific)
 | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:90:19: note: in definition of macro '__gthrw2'
 90 | static __typeof(type) name \
 | ^~~~
./gthr-default.h:104:1: note: in expansion of macro '__gthrw'
 104 | __gthrw(pthread_setspecific)
 | ^~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:106:9: error: 'pthread_create' undeclared here (not in a function); did you mean 'htab_create'?
 106 | __gthrw(pthread_create)
 | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:90:19: note: in definition of macro '__gthrw2'
 90 | static __typeof(type) name \
 | ^~~~
./gthr-default.h:106:1: note: in expansion of macro '__gthrw'
 106 | __gthrw(pthread_create)
 | ^~~~~~~
./gthr-default.h:107:9: error: 'pthread_join' undeclared here (not in a function); did you mean 'pthread_kill'?
 107 | __gthrw(pthread_join)
 | ^~~~~~~~~~~~
.....
.....

I checked the ../newlib-4.4.0.20231231/newlib/libc/include/pthread.h, it has following definitions,

254 /* Thread Creation, P1003.1c/Draft 10, p. 144 */
255 
256 int pthread_create (pthread_t *__pthread, const pthread_attr_t *__attr,
257 void *(*__start_routine)(void *), void *__arg);
258 
259 /* Wait for Thread Termination, P1003.1c/Draft 10, p. 147 */
260 
261 int pthread_join (pthread_t __pthread, void **__value_ptr);
....
....
298 #define PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT _PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT
299 
300 int pthread_once (pthread_once_t *__once_control,
301 void (*__init_routine)(void));
....
....
308 /* Thread-Specific Data Management, P1003.1c/Draft 10, p. 165 */
309 
310 int pthread_setspecific (pthread_key_t __key, const void *__value);
311 void * pthread_getspecific (pthread_key_t __key);

I googled and found similar issues, one pointed out there should be something wrong in the building system, but I don't know what problem it is.

So currently, building gcc-11.3.0 is failed with enable-threads=posix, how to fix it and build a ARM GNU toolchain with newlib?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Thread support only makes sense if you have a target operating system capable of running threads; that’s not the case on a bare-metal system, so GCC configured in this way can’t support POSIX threads. Even with operating system support, you also need specific support in newlib and GCC; see the malloc pool locking functions for example.

Building using the defaults (no --enable-threads option at all) should work just fine and pick appropriate settings.

Note that if GCC 9 and newlib 3.3 is good enough, you could save yourself some trouble by installing the gcc-arm-none-eabi package on Ubuntu 20.04. Later releases of Ubuntu have newer versions of GCC, but newlib 4.4 isn’t available in Ubuntu yet (it is available in Debian so it should be available in Ubuntu 24.10).

• wangt13: Stephen, the target OS is capable of running threads (the RTOS is using newlib and support basic pthread functions). And I tried building GCC with --without-threads and succeeded. I am not sure if gcc-arm-none-eabi can work with this RTOS (the vendor patched the newlib to make the RTOS work with newlib). Newlib 3.3 has a memory leakage in thread reentry, which is fixed in later version eg. newlib 4.4.
• Stephen Kitt: That does change things. Does the version of newlib you downloaded include the vendor patches?
• wangt13: The official newlib does NOT include vendor's patch, I patched it myself.
• Stephen Kitt: Did you patch GCC too?
• wangt13: No, I have no idea on the reason to patch GCC, what is it?