Compiling gcc on Solaris 10 x86

September 20, 2009 | Filed Under Solaris 

Here are step by step instructions for compiling gcc 4.2.4 on a fresh installation of Solaris 10 x86. Some key information came from a post by Andreas Höschler on the discuss-gnustep mailing list.

First you will need to get pkgutil (more info here). Download it:

wget http://ftp.math.purdue.edu/mirrors/opencsw.org/pkgutil-sparc.pkg

Tip: if you are running Solaris in VirtualBox then you can easily move it over using sshfs (see my previous post for details on using sshfs with a VirtualBox instance).

To install it and update the catalogue (I assume that everything is done as root from now on):

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/csw/bin
pkgadd -d pkgutil-sparc.pkg
pkgutil -U

It’s handy to have bash, wget, vim, and screen:

pkgutil -i bash wget vim screen

A few things that we’ll need for building gcc:

pkgutil -i binutil autoconf automake gtar bzip2 gmake

I don’t think that all of these exports are necessary apart from the
path but my build worked with all of them:

export LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
export LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
export LDFLAGS="-RLIBDIR"
export LD_OPTIONS="-L/usr/local/lib -R/usr/local/lib"
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/opt/csw/bin:/usr/ccs/bin

I used the GNU assembler and the Sun linker:

# /usr/sfw/bin/gas -v
GNU assembler version 2.15 (i386-pc-solaris2.10) using BFD version 2.15
# /usr/ccs/bin/ld -V
ld: Software Generation Utilities - Solaris Link Editors: 5.10-1.493

Make sure that your ld and gas give same or later versions.

To compile gcc you will need gmp and mpfr:

wget ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/gmp-4.2.4.tar.bz2
gtar jxf gmp-4.2.4.tar.bz2
cd gmp-4.2.4
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
gmake
gmake install
gmake check
cd ..

wget ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/mpfr-2.4.1.tar.bz2
gtar jxf mpfr-2.4.1.tar.bz2
cd mpfr-2.4.1
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
gmake
gmake install
cd ..

I did a full install of Solaris 10 so I ended up with this older gcc compiler:

-bash-3.00$ /usr/sfw/bin/gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/sfw/lib/gcc/i386-pc-solaris2.10/3.4.3/specs
Configured with: /builds/sfw10-gate/usr/src/cmd/gcc/gcc-3.4.3/configure --prefix=/usr/sfw --with-as=/usr/sfw/bin/gas --with-gnu-as --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld --without-gnu-ld --enable-languages=c,c++ --enable-shared
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.4.3 (csl-sol210-3_4-branch+sol_rpath)

We will use that version of gcc to compile the newer one.

Warning: gcc is supposed to be compiled in a subdirectory of the main source tree. You can end up in trouble if you just run ./configure in the top level directory. Instead we work in the objdir directory. Pick a close mirror from this list and then compile gcc (note that you need all of the environment variables (the export lines) from before). If it makes any difference, I did this in a bash shell, not sh (the default for root on Solaris).

wget http://your-closest-mirror/.../gcc-4.2.4.tar.bz2
gtar jxf gcc-4.2.4.tar.bz2
cd gcc-4.2.4
mkdir obj
cd objdir
../configure --with-gnu-as --with-as=/usr/sfw/bin/gas \
--without-gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld --enable-shared \
--disable-nls --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,fortran \
--disable-multilib
gmake
gmake install

Now make sure that /usr/local/bin is early enough in your path. For example:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/opt/csw/bin:/usr/ccs/bin

And we have success:

# which gcc
/usr/local/bin/gcc

# gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: i386-pc-solaris2.10
Configured with: ../configure --with-gnu-as --with-as=/usr/sfw/bin/gas --without-gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld --enable-shared --disable-nls --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,fortran --disable-multilib
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.2.4

I had no luck with the gcc 4.4.x packages available via pkgutil on x86 basically due to a a known problem.

I also tried to build gcc 4.4.1 from source and it failed like this:

checking whether /export/home/carlo/gcc-4.4.1/build1/./gcc/xgcc
-B/export/home/carlo/gcc-4.4.1/build1/./gcc/
-B/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/bin/
-B/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/lib/ -isystem
/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/include -isystem
/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/sys-include  -m64 supports -pedantic ...
yes
checking whether /export/home/carlo/gcc-4.4.1/build1/./gcc/xgcc
-B/export/home/carlo/gcc-4.4.1/build1/./gcc/
-B/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/bin/
-B/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/lib/ -isystem
/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/include -isystem
/usr/local//i386-pc-solaris2.10/sys-include  -m64 and cc understand -c
and -o together... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... unknown
configure: error: unknown endianness
presetting ac_cv_c_bigendian=no (or yes) will help
gmake[1]: *** [configure-target-libiberty] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/export/home/carlo/gcc-4.4.1/build1'
gmake: *** [all] Error 2

Other people hit this same problem but I couldn’t find a solution.

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