- ISO C++98 compiler
- Necessary to bootstrap GCC, although versions of GCC prior
to 4.8 also allow bootstrapping with a ISO C89 compiler and versions
of GCC prior to 3.4 also allow bootstrapping with a traditional
(K&R) C compiler.
To build all languages in a cross-compiler or other configuration where
3-stage bootstrap is not performed, you need to start with an existing
GCC binary (version 3.4 or later) because source code for language
frontends other than C might use GCC extensions.
Note that to bootstrap GCC with versions of GCC earlier than 3.4, you
may need to use --disable-stage1-checking, though
bootstrapping the compiler with such earlier compilers is strongly
discouraged.
- C standard library and headers
-
In order to build GCC, the C standard library and headers must be present
for all target variants for which target libraries will be built (and not
only the variant of the host C++ compiler).
This affects the popular ‘x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu’ platform (among
other multilib targets), for which 64-bit (‘x86_64’) and 32-bit
(‘i386’) libc headers are usually packaged separately. If you do a
build of a native compiler on ‘x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu’, make sure you
either have the 32-bit libc developer package properly installed (the exact
name of the package depends on your distro) or you must build GCC as a
64-bit only compiler by configuring with the option
--disable-multilib. Otherwise, you may encounter an error such as
‘fatal error: gnu/stubs-32.h: No such file’
- GNAT
-
In order to build the Ada compiler (GNAT) you must already have GNAT
installed because portions of the Ada frontend are written in Ada (with
GNAT extensions.) Refer to the Ada installation instructions for more
specific information.
- A “working” POSIX compatible shell, or GNU bash
-
Necessary when running configure because some
/bin/sh shells have bugs and may crash when configuring the
target libraries. In other cases, /bin/sh or ksh
have disastrous corner-case performance problems. This
can cause target configure runs to literally take days to
complete in some cases.
So on some platforms /bin/ksh is sufficient, on others it
isn't. See the host/target specific instructions for your platform, or
use bash to be sure. Then set CONFIG_SHELL in your
environment to your “good” shell prior to running
configure/make.
zsh is not a fully compliant POSIX shell and will not
work when configuring GCC.
- A POSIX or SVR4 awk
-
Necessary for creating some of the generated source files for GCC.
If in doubt, use a recent GNU awk version, as some of the older ones
are broken. GNU awk version 3.1.5 is known to work.
- GNU binutils
-
Necessary in some circumstances, optional in others. See the
host/target specific instructions for your platform for the exact
requirements.
- gzip version 1.2.4 (or later) or
- bzip2 version 1.0.2 (or later)
-
Necessary to uncompress GCC tar files when source code is
obtained via FTP mirror sites.
- GNU make version 3.80 (or later)
-
You must have GNU make installed to build GCC.
- GNU tar version 1.14 (or later)
-
Necessary (only on some platforms) to untar the source code. Many
systems' tar programs will also work, only try GNU
tar if you have problems.
- Perl version 5.6.1 (or later)
-
Necessary when targeting Darwin, building ‘libstdc++’,
and not using --disable-symvers.
Necessary when targeting Solaris 2 with Sun ld and not using
--disable-symvers. The bundled perl in Solaris 8
and up works.
Necessary when regenerating Makefile dependencies in libiberty.
Necessary when regenerating libiberty/functions.texi.
Necessary when generating manpages from Texinfo manuals.
Used by various scripts to generate some files included in SVN (mainly
Unicode-related and rarely changing) from source tables.
- jar, or InfoZIP (zip and unzip)
-
Necessary to build libgcj, the GCJ runtime.
Several support libraries are necessary to build GCC, some are required,
others optional. While any sufficiently new version of required tools
usually work, library requirements are generally stricter. Newer
versions may work in some cases, but it's safer to use the exact
versions documented. We appreciate bug reports about problems with
newer versions, though. If your OS vendor provides packages for the
support libraries then using those packages may be the simplest way to
install the libraries.
- autoconf version 2.64
- GNU m4 version 1.4.6 (or later)
-
Necessary when modifying configure.ac, aclocal.m4, etc.
to regenerate configure and config.in files.
- automake version 1.11.1
-
Necessary when modifying a Makefile.am file to regenerate its
associated Makefile.in.
Much of GCC does not use automake, so directly edit the Makefile.in
file. Specifically this applies to the gcc, intl,
libcpp, libiberty, libobjc directories as well
as any of their subdirectories.
For directories that use automake, GCC requires the latest release in
the 1.11 series, which is currently 1.11.1. When regenerating a directory
to a newer version, please update all the directories using an older 1.11
to the latest released version.
- gettext version 0.14.5 (or later)
-
Needed to regenerate gcc.pot.
- gperf version 2.7.2 (or later)
-
Necessary when modifying gperf input files, e.g.
gcc/cp/cfns.gperf to regenerate its associated header file, e.g.
gcc/cp/cfns.h.
- DejaGnu 1.4.4
- Expect
- Tcl
-
Necessary to run the GCC testsuite; see the section on testing for
details. Tcl 8.6 has a known regression in RE pattern handling that
make parts of the testsuite fail. See
http://core.tcl.tk/tcl/tktview/267b7e2334ee2e9de34c4b00d6e72e2f1997085f
for more information. This bug has been fixed in 8.6.1.
- autogen version 5.5.4 (or later) and
- guile version 1.4.1 (or later)
-
Necessary to regenerate fixinc/fixincl.x from
fixinc/inclhack.def and fixinc/*.tpl.
Necessary to run ‘make check’ for fixinc.
Necessary to regenerate the top level Makefile.in file from
Makefile.tpl and Makefile.def.
- Flex version 2.5.4 (or later)
-
Necessary when modifying *.l files.
Necessary to build GCC during development because the generated output
files are not included in the SVN repository. They are included in
releases.
- Texinfo version 4.7 (or later)
-
Necessary for running makeinfo when modifying *.texi
files to test your changes.
Necessary for running make dvi or make pdf to
create printable documentation in DVI or PDF format. Texinfo version
4.8 or later is required for make pdf.
Necessary to build GCC documentation during development because the
generated output files are not included in the SVN repository. They are
included in releases.
- TeX (any working version)
-
Necessary for running texi2dvi and texi2pdf, which
are used when running make dvi or make pdf to create
DVI or PDF files, respectively.
- Sphinx version 1.0 (or later)
-
Necessary to regenerate jit/docs/_build/texinfo from the .rst
files in the directories below jit/docs.
- SVN (any version)
- SSH (any version)
-
Necessary to access the SVN repository. Public releases and weekly
snapshots of the development sources are also available via FTP.
- GNU diffutils version 2.7 (or later)
-
Useful when submitting patches for the GCC source code.
- patch version 2.5.4 (or later)
-
Necessary when applying patches, created with diff, to one's
own sources.
- ecj1
- gjavah
-
If you wish to modify .java files in libjava, you will need to
configure with --enable-java-maintainer-mode, and you will need
to have executables named ecj1 and gjavah in your path.
The ecj1 executable should run the Eclipse Java compiler via
the GCC-specific entry point. You can download a suitable jar from
ftp://sourceware.org/pub/java/, or by running the script
contrib/download_ecj.
- antlr.jar version 2.7.1 (or later)
- antlr binary
-
If you wish to build the gjdoc binary in libjava, you will
need to have an antlr.jar library available. The library is
searched for in system locations but can be specified with
--with-antlr-jar= instead. When configuring with
--enable-java-maintainer-mode, you will need to have one of
the executables named cantlr, runantlr or
antlr in your path.