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C.3 Recommended Tools for Compilation ¶

We recommend installing the following GNU tools before attempting to build the GNU C Library:

• GNU make 4.0 or newer

  As of release time, GNU make 4.4.1 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GCC 6.2 or newer

  GCC 6.2 or higher is required. In general it is recommended to use the newest version of the compiler that is known to work for building the GNU C Library, as newer compilers usually produce better code. As of release time, GCC 13.2 is the newest compiler verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

  For PowerPC 64-bits little-endian (powerpc64le), a GCC version with support for -mno-gnu-attribute, -mabi=ieeelongdouble, and -mabi=ibmlongdouble is required. Likewise, the compiler must also support passing -mlong-double-128 with the preceding options. As of release, this implies GCC 7.4 and newer (excepting GCC 7.5.0, see GCC PR94200). These additional features are required for building the GNU C Library with support for IEEE long double.

  For ARC architecture builds, GCC 8.3 or higher is needed.

  For s390x architecture builds, GCC 7.1 or higher is needed (See gcc Bug 98269).

  For AArch64 architecture builds with mathvec enabled, GCC 10 or higher is needed due to dependency on arm_sve.h.

  For multi-arch support it is recommended to use a GCC which has been built with support for GNU indirect functions. This ensures that correct debugging information is generated for functions selected by IFUNC resolvers. This support can either be enabled by configuring GCC with ‘--enable-gnu-indirect-function’, or by enabling it by default by setting ‘default_gnu_indirect_function’ variable for a particular architecture in the GCC source file gcc/config.gcc.

  You can use whatever compiler you like to compile programs that use the GNU C Library.

  Check the FAQ for any special compiler issues on particular platforms.

• GNU binutils 2.25 or later

  You must use GNU binutils (as and ld) to build the GNU C Library. No other assembler or linker has the necessary functionality at the moment. As of release time, GNU binutils 2.42 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

  For PowerPC 64-bits little-endian (powerpc64le), objcopy is required to support --update-section. This option requires binutils 2.26 or newer.

  ARC architecture needs binutils 2.32 or higher for TLS related fixes.

• GNU texinfo 4.7 or later

  To correctly translate and install the Texinfo documentation you need this version of the texinfo package. Earlier versions do not understand all the tags used in the document, and the installation mechanism for the info files is not present or works differently. As of release time, texinfo 7.0.3 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU awk 3.1.2, or higher

  awk is used in several places to generate files. Some gawk extensions are used, including the asorti function, which was introduced in version 3.1.2 of gawk. As of release time, gawk version 5.2.2 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU bison 2.7 or later

  bison is used to generate the yacc parser code in the intl subdirectory. As of release time, bison version 3.8.2 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• Perl 5

  Perl is not required, but if present it is used in some tests and the mtrace program, to build the GNU C Library manual. As of release time perl version 5.38.2 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• GNU sed 3.02 or newer

  Sed is used in several places to generate files. Most scripts work with any version of sed. As of release time, sed version 4.9 is the newest verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

• Python 3.4 or later

  Python is required to build the GNU C Library. As of release time, Python 3.11 is the newest verified to work for building and testing the GNU C Library.

• PExpect 4.0

  The pretty printer tests drive GDB through test programs and compare its output to the printers’. PExpect is used to capture the output of GDB, and should be compatible with the Python version in your system. As of release time PExpect 4.8.0 is the newest verified to work to test the pretty printers.

• The Python abnf module.

  This module is optional and used to verify some ABNF grammars in the manual. Version 2.2.0 has been confirmed to work as expected. A missing abnf module does not reduce the test coverage of the library itself.

• GDB 7.8 or later with support for Python 2.7/3.4 or later

  GDB itself needs to be configured with Python support in order to use the pretty printers. Notice that your system having Python available doesn’t imply that GDB supports it, nor that your system’s Python and GDB’s have the same version. As of release time GNU debugger 13.2 is the newest verified to work to test the pretty printers.

  Unless Python, PExpect and GDB with Python support are present, the printer tests will report themselves as UNSUPPORTED. Notice that some of the printer tests require the GNU C Library to be compiled with debugging symbols.

If you change any of the configure.ac files you will also need

• GNU autoconf 2.72 (exactly)

and if you change any of the message translation files you will need

• GNU gettext 0.10.36 or later

  As of release time, GNU gettext version 0.21.1 is the newest version verified to work to build the GNU C Library.

You may also need these packages if you upgrade your source tree using patches, although we try to avoid this.