Version 14.1.0-1 is a new release; it follows the official GNU GCC release.

The xPack GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of GCC.

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 GCC on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install GCC is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/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/gcc@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/gcc@14.1.0-1.1 --verbose

It is also possible to install GCC globally, in the user home folder, but this requires xPack aware tools to automatically identify them and manage paths.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/gcc@latest --verbose

Uninstall

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

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/gcc

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/gcc

Compliance

The xPack GCC generally follows the official GCC releases.

The current version is based on:

  • GCC version 14.1.0 from May 7, 2024;
  • binutils version 2.42 from Jan 29, 2024.

Supported languages

The supported languages are:

  • C
  • C++
  • Obj-C
  • Obj-C++
  • Fortran

Note: Obj-C/C++ support is minimalistic.

Starting with 12.2.0-2, support for 32-bit multilib was added on x86 GNU/Linux; it can be enabled via the -m32 compile option.

Changes

Compared to the upstream, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

Please see the separate tests results page.

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

To save space and bandwidth, 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.

For 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:

63865671a58862defc10e0f435b91245f4b30ca2f2553397a987c894c400b493
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

b30ab4a0a2bdeeebc7fbcc0244cefb4080e47e66eb223216fdeb97b5b557d877
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

c4699e204043f47cb121a32e8b91c91d21be595d3fbcd776c62975d39c10a553
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

4eb1c214fa0f90a29fe0e65b5db35118a2a303f31b634a6d903d2d08dcb22dec
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

de4ccdbe8691fb661c8f231a75a28796720a5ce95ee0fbaf63f7883eec7c42fe
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

f69f8a25835fe41b5647ea918a20e435fd23e9a96f95a15e85fe175b3076d02b
xpack-gcc-14.1.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

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

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022.

Pre-deprecation notice for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux

Due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems, Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a little while, but expect it to be dropped by 2025, so it is recommended to consider an upgrade to a RPi 4 or 5 with at least 4 GB (preferably 8 GB) of RAM.

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.