Version 12.3.1-1.1 is a new release; it follows the upstream Arm release.

The xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of Arm GNU Toolchain.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install

The full details of installing the xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install Arm Embedded GCC is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc from the npmjs.com registry.

With the xpm tool available, installing the latest version of the package and adding it as a development dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Add a package.json if not already present

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc@12.3.1-1.1.1 --verbose

For xPacks aware tools, like the Eclipse Embedded C/C++ plug-ins, it is also possible to install Arm Embedded GCC globally, in the user home folder.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc@latest --verbose

Eclipse will automatically identify binaries installed with xpm and provide a convenient method to manage paths.

Uninstall

To remove the links created by xpm in the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/aarch64-none-elf-gcc

Compliance

The xPack GNU AArch64 Embedded GCC generally follows the official Arm GNU Toolchain releases.

The current version is based on:

  • Arm GNU Toolchain release 12.3.Rel1 from July 28, 2023 and uses the same sources. It includes:
    • GCC 12.3.1
    • binutils 2.40
    • newlib 4.3.0
    • GDB 13.2

Supported libraries

The supported libraries are:

$ aarch64-none-elf-gcc -print-multi-lib
.;
ilp32;@mabi=ilp32

Changes

Compared to the official Arm version, there should be no functional changes.

XML parsing in GDB

Some advanced GDB servers, like the one provided with SEGGER J-Link, are capable of passing an XML with the target capabilities to the GDB client. For unknown reasons, the Arm toolchain distribution came without XML parsing support. The xPack distribution brings back support for XML parsing and full integration with the SEGGER J-Link GDB server.

Python

Support for Python scripting was added to GDB. This distribution provides a separate binary, aarch64-none-elf-gdb-py3 with support for Python 3.11.1.

The Python 3 run-time is included, so GDB does not need any version of Python to be installed, and is insensitive to the presence of other versions.

Text User Interface (TUI)

Support for TUI was added to GDB. The ncurses library was added to the distribution.

No Guile

Due to the difficulties of building standalone Guile libraries on all platforms, support for Guile scripting in GDB is currently not available.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • [#2] due to a an issue in the build scripts, on GNU/Linux, the aarch64-none-elf-gdb was built without ELF support; fixed in 12.3.1-2.1.

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the libexec folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:

$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
 0x000000000000001d (RPATH)            Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH has the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so if this later one is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.

Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH, which has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and does not tolerate setting it in the environment.

@rpath and @loader_path

Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool to use a relative path.

Documentation

The original GNU GCC documentation is available online.

Build

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reachedFor the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the How to build page.

CI tests

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests

The binaries were tested on a variety of platforms, but mainly to check the integrity of the build, not the compiler functionality.

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

6cc55b6bd040e3eb1cd52528f8eb3f52a655647a3572f1be0bd67bf0f53063c9
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

ba6947c1d8b55ec5ee80ad300aea18ac2025efb03df8002f780efed040cf3349
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

766fb21b38d9dfe1a06707eeb575020f459df2fd9a82a4bb6113ac1b01ac5d48
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-linux-arm.tar.gz

0eaba21e98d0de28beecac0cbdb76fc46a99fb676075be2d64bf6b77d664bbc0
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

b8567f486e9f5475494d8cb4177481024085c635be989a055cc4fdc89ef79e4f
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-linux-x64.tar.gz

934d4ac5372198f281286d73467725bfdcbc61bac2ce3f91117dfc03a673e629
xpack-aarch64-none-elf-gcc-12.3.1-1.1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.

As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.

From 2025 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.

Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.

Download analytics

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.