I have been working on getting a small staticly compiled program for ARM.
I have staticly compiled with two different compilers
https://uclibc.org/downloads/binaries/0.9.30.1/cross-compiler-armv5l.tar.bz2
(cross-compiler-armv5l/bin/armv5l-gcc)
and
gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi
Now, my question is, why does the gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi compile my program to over 400kb and the uclibc binaries compile my program to 30kb?
This is a HUGE size difference and I am wanting to compile in armv7l but I can't find any binaries like ulibc has. Is there a way to cross compile straight from gcc to create the same effect as the uclibc binaries.
These are the flags I use:
-s -O2 -static
If anyone could point me in the right direction as to how to cross compile gcc so that it isn't inflating my binary by 10 times it size that would be really helpful. Thanks!
Related
I have a prepared a minimal Cmake project containing one cpp file which represent the main and one cpp file which represent the shared library, that prints basically hello world.
https://github.com/courteous/wasmELF.git
The target is to compile this miniaml code with emscripten/clang only and produce
1) one WebAssembly (wasm) binary module version 0x1 (MVP)
2) one ELF 64-bit LSB
without clearing the cmake build directory and rebuilding it again.
Currently i can successfully produce them bought by running the commands
emconfigure cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=WASM
make
and
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Linux
make
However the problem is that in order to do that i need to compile the first one with Clang the to remove the build and then to do a second compilation with GCC. I would like Emscripten/Clang to produce them bought instead. I do not want to delete the build directory since the compilation times is taking too long. (Well not in this Project but imagine if the project was much larger)
What i see is that emscripten/clang selects always a target "wasm32-unknown-emscripten"
clang++ -target wasm32-unknown-emscripten
and if i understand that correctly the target should change
I do see that the project is producing LLVM IR bitcode since i have send the flag "flto"
i.e.
file TestSharedClass.cpp.o
TestSharedClass.cpp.o: LLVM IR bitcode
and in the CMakeLists.txt
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-flto")
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu is a supported target by emscripten/Clang
~/Projects/emscripten/emsdk/upstream/bin$ ./llc --version
LLVM (http://llvm.org/):
LLVM version 11.0.0git
Optimized build with assertions.
Default target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Host CPU: haswell
Registered Targets:
wasm32 - WebAssembly 32-bit
wasm64 - WebAssembly 64-bit
x86 - 32-bit X86: Pentium-Pro and above
x86-64 - 64-bit X86: EM64T and AMD64
In cmake i do have
SET(TARGET x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)
however when i run
emconfigure cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Linux
make
i get mainTestFile.js and mainTestFile.wasm instead of ELF 64-bitcode.
what i am doing wrong here. How to tell clang to product once ELF and once wasm from the same code run without having to clear the build directory. This should be possible since clang is producing LLVM IR bitcode. Or do i understand that wrong?
https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/issues/10361
OK that seems to not be possible i.e. the reply from the dev on github states that emcc or emmake can not be used with another target other then wasm32-unknown-emscripten.
I need to build a complete linux development framework for a Cortex-M MCU, specifically a STM32F7 Cortex-M7. First I've to explain some background info so please bear with me.
I've downloaded and built a gcc toolchain with croostool-ng 1.24 specifying an armv7e-m architecture with thumb-only instructions and linux 4.20 as the OS and that I want the output to be FLAT executables (I assumed it will mean bFLT).
Then I proceeded to compile the linux kernel (version 4.20) using configs/stm32_defconf, and then a statically compiled busybox rootfs, all using my new toolchain.
Kernel booted just fine but throw me an error and kernel painc with the following message:
Starting init: /sbin/init exists but couldn't execute it (error -8)
and
request_module: modprobe binfmt-464c cannot be processed, kmod busy with 50 threads
The interesting part is the last message. My busybox excutable turned out to be an .ELF! Cortex-M has no MMU, so it's imposible to build a linux kernel on a MMU-less architecture with .ELF support, that's why an (464c)"LF" binary loader can't be found, there is none.
So at last, my question is:
how could I build bFLT executables to run on MMU-less Linux architectures? My toolchain has elf2flt, but in crosstool-ng I've already specified a MMU-less architecture and FLAT binary and I was expecting direct bFLT output, not a "useless" executable. Is that even possible?
Or better: is there anywhere a documented standard procedure to build a complete, working Linux system based on Cortex-M?
Follow-up:
I gave up on building FLAT binaries and tried FDPIC executables. Another dead end. AFAIK:
Linux has long been supporting ELF FDPIC, but the ABI for ARM is pretty new.
It seems that still at this day and age, GCC has not a standard way to enable FDPIC. On some architectures you can use -mfdpic. Not on arm, don't know why. I even don't know if ARM FDPIC is supported at all by mainline GCC. Info is extremely scarce if inexistent.
It seems crosstool-ng 1.24 is BROKEN at building ARM ELF FDPIC support. Resulting gcc has not -mfdpic, and -fPIC generates ARM executables, not ARM FDPIC.
Any insight will be very appreciated.
you can generate FDPIC ELF files just with a prebuilt arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc compiler.
Specifications of an FDPIC ELF file:
Position independent executable/code (i.e. -fPIE and fPIC)
Should be compiled as a shared executable (ET_DYN ELF) to be position independent
use these flags to compile your programs:
arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc -shared -fPIE -fPIC <YOUR PROGRAM.C> -o <OUTPUT FILE>
I've compiled busybox successfully for STM32H7 with this method.
As I know, unfortunately FDPIC ELFs should be compiled with - shared flag so, they use shared libraries and cannot be compiled as -static ELF.
For more information take a look at this file:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/binfmt_elf_fdpic.c
Track the crosstool-ng BFLAT issue from here:
https://github.com/crosstool-ng/crosstool-ng/issues/1399
Can we configure gcc running on intel x64 architecture to produce binary for ARM chip by just passing some flags to gcc and not using a cross compiler.
Short: Nope
Compiler:
gcc is not a native crosscompiler, the target architecture has to be specified at the time you compile gcc. (Some exceptions apply, as for example x86 and x86_64 can be supported at the same time)
clang would be a native crosscompiler, and you can generate code for arm by passing -target=arm-linux-gnu, but you still cant produce binaries, as you need a linker and a C-library too. Means you can run clang -target=arm-linux-gnu -c <your file> and compile C/C++ Code (will likely need to point it to your C/C++ include paths) - but you cant build binaries.
Rest of the toolchain:
You need a fitting linker and toolchain too, both are specific to the architecture and OS you want to run at.
Possible solutions:
Get a fitting toolchain, or compile your own. For arm linux you have for ex. CrossToolchains if you are on debian, for barebones you can get a crosscompiler from codesourcery.
Since you were very vague, its not possible to give you a clearer answer
I wrote a very simple ncurses program to be run in BusyBox environment. However, it seems like that I cannot get my program to compile with everything. I used:
g++ menu.cpp -ohello -lncurses --> Works fine
g++ -static menu.cpp -ohello -lncurses --> Undefined reference to SP (many times)
I found this question but it ignores linking to ncurses. I need a very single executable. My targeted environment is fixed, so I do not concern portability.
You should paste the exact compiler calls and the exact error messages that you are getting.
Do you have a static version of the ncurses library?
More importantly, do you have a static version of the ncurses library compiled for your target environment? For example your target environment may be using ulibc instead of glibc or it could even be a whole different platform (hint: tell us what your target platform is).
Are you certain that you are compiling with the right flags? The compiler flags that you are showing seem more suited to compiling an application for use in the build host environment...
Is it (easily) possible to use software floating point on i386 linux without incurring the expense of trapping into the kernel on each call? I've tried -msoft-float, but it seems the normal (ubuntu) C libraries don't have a FP library included:
$ gcc -m32 -msoft-float -lm -o test test.c
/tmp/cc8RXn8F.o: In function `main':
test.c:(.text+0x39): undefined reference to `__muldf3'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
It is surprising that gcc doesn't support this natively as the code is clearly available in the source within a directory called soft-fp. It's possible to compile that library manually:
$ svn co svn://gcc.gnu.org/svn/gcc/trunk/libgcc/ libgcc
$ cd libgcc/soft-fp/
$ gcc -c -O2 -msoft-float -m32 -I../config/arm/ -I.. *.c
$ ar -crv libsoft-fp.a *.o
There are a few c files which don't compile due to errors but the majority does compile. After copying libsoft-fp.a into the directory with our source files they now compile fine with -msoft-float:
$ gcc -g -m32 -msoft-float test.c -lsoft-fp -L.
A quick inspection using
$ objdump -D --disassembler-options=intel a.out | less
shows that as expected no x87 floating point instructions are called and the code runs considerably slower as well, by a factor of 8 in my example which uses lots of division.
Note: I would've preferred to compile the soft-float library with
$ gcc -c -O2 -msoft-float -m32 -I../config/i386/ -I.. *.c
but that results in loads of error messages like
adddf3.c: In function '__adddf3':
adddf3.c:46: error: unknown register name 'st(1)' in 'asm'
Seems like the i386 version is not well maintained as st(1) points to one of the x87 registers which are obviously not available when using -msoft-float.
Strangely or luckily the arm version compiles fine on an i386 and seems to work just fine.
Unless you want to bootstrap your entire toolchain by hand, you could start with uclibc toolchain (the i386 version, I imagine) -- soft float is (AFAIK) not directly supported for "native" compilation on debian and derivatives, but it can be used via the "embedded" approach of the uclibc toolchain.
GCC does not support this without some extra libraries. From the 386 documentation:
-msoft-float Generate output containing library calls for floating
point. Warning: the requisite
libraries are not part of GCC.
Normally the facilities of the
machine's usual C compiler are used,
but this can't be done directly in
cross-compilation. You must make your
own arrangements to provide suitable
library functions for
cross-compilation.
On machines where a function returns
floating point results in the 80387
register stack, some floating point
opcodes may be emitted even if
-msoft-float is used
Also, you cannot set -mfpmath=unit to "none", it has to be sse, 387 or both.
However, according to this gnu wiki page, there is fp-soft and ieee. There is also SoftFloat.
(For ARM there is -mfloat-abi=softfp, but it does not seem like something similar is available for 386 SX).
It does not seem like tcc supports software floating point numbers either.
Good luck finding a library that works for you.
G'day,
Unless you're targetting a platform that doesn't have inbuilt FP support, I can't think of a reason why you'd want to emulate FP support.
Doesn't your x386 platform have external FPU support? Pity it's not a x486 with the FPU built in!
In my experience, any soft emulation is bound to be much slower than its hardware equivalent.
That's why I finished up writing a package in Ada to taget the onboard 68k FPU instead of using the soft emulation provided by the compiler manufacturer at the time. They finished up bundling it in their compiler as a matter of fact.
Edit: Just seen your comment below. Hmmm, if you don't need a full suite of FP support is it possible to roll your own for the few math functions you do need? That how the Ada package I mentioned got started.
HTH
cheers,