Version 12.3.0-1 is a new release; it follows the GNU GCC release. It also adds the optional zicsr and zifencei to the multi-lib definitions.

The xPack GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of the GNU GCC.

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • GNU/Linux Intel 64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • GNU/Linux Arm 32/64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • Intel Windows 64-bit: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • Intel macOS 64-bit: 10.13 or later
  • Apple Silicon macOS 64-bit: 11.6 or later

Install

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

Easy install

The easiest way to install GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/riscv-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/riscv-none-elf-gcc@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/riscv-none-elf-gcc@12.3.0-1.1 --verbose

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

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/riscv-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/riscv-none-elf-gcc

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

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

Compliance

The xPack GNU RISC-V Embedded GCC use the official sources, with no functional changes:

  • GCC 12.3.0
  • binutils 2.41
  • newlib 4.3.0
  • gdb 13.2
  • python 3.11.4

Supported libraries

The default architecture/ABI pair is rv32imac/ilp32.

The other supported libraries are:

$ riscv-none-elf-gcc -print-multi-lib
.;
rv32e/ilp32e;@march=rv32e@mabi=ilp32e
rv32ea/ilp32e;@march=rv32ea@mabi=ilp32e
rv32eac/ilp32e;@march=rv32eac@mabi=ilp32e
rv32ec/ilp32e;@march=rv32ec@mabi=ilp32e
rv32em/ilp32e;@march=rv32em@mabi=ilp32e
rv32ema/ilp32e;@march=rv32ema@mabi=ilp32e
rv32emac/ilp32e;@march=rv32emac@mabi=ilp32e
rv32emc/ilp32e;@march=rv32emc@mabi=ilp32e
rv32i/ilp32;@march=rv32i@mabi=ilp32
rv32ia/ilp32;@march=rv32ia@mabi=ilp32
rv32iac/ilp32;@march=rv32iac@mabi=ilp32
rv32iaf_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32iaf_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32iafc_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32iafc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32iafd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32iafd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32iafdc_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32iafdc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32ic/ilp32;@march=rv32ic@mabi=ilp32
rv32if_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32if_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32ifc_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32ifc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32ifd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32ifd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32ifdc_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32ifdc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32im/ilp32;@march=rv32im@mabi=ilp32
rv32ima/ilp32;@march=rv32ima@mabi=ilp32
rv32imaf_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imaf_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imafc_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imafc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imafd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imafd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32imafdc_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imafdc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32imc/ilp32;@march=rv32imc@mabi=ilp32
rv32imf_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imf_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imfc_zicsr/ilp32f;@march=rv32imfc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32f
rv32imfd_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imfd_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv32imfdc_zicsr/ilp32d;@march=rv32imfdc_zicsr@mabi=ilp32d
rv64i/lp64;@march=rv64i@mabi=lp64
rv64ia/lp64;@march=rv64ia@mabi=lp64
rv64iac/lp64;@march=rv64iac@mabi=lp64
rv64iaf_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64iaf_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64iafc_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64iafc_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64iafd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64iafd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64iafdc_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64iafdc_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64ic/lp64;@march=rv64ic@mabi=lp64
rv64if_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64if_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64ifc_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64ifc_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64ifd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64ifd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64ifdc_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64ifdc_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64im/lp64;@march=rv64im@mabi=lp64
rv64ima/lp64;@march=rv64ima@mabi=lp64
rv64imac/lp64;@march=rv64imac@mabi=lp64
rv64imaf_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imaf_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64imafc_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imafc_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64imafd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64imafd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64imafdc_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64imafdc_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64imc/lp64;@march=rv64imc@mabi=lp64
rv64imf_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imf_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64imfc_zicsr/lp64f;@march=rv64imfc_zicsr@mabi=lp64f
rv64imfd_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64imfd_zicsr@mabi=lp64d
rv64imfdc_zicsr/lp64d;@march=rv64imfdc_zicsr@mabi=lp64d

Changes

Compared to the upstream GNU release, there are no functional changes.

risc-none-elf-gcc

For compliance reasons, starting with 11.x, the name of the toolchain was updated to risc-none-elf-gcc.

RISC-V ISA updates

Compared to previous releases, starting from 12.x, the compiler implements the new RISC-V ISA, which introduces an incompatibility issue, and builds might throw error messages like unrecognized opcode csrr.

The reason is that csr read/write (csrr*/csrw*) instructions and fence.i instruction were separated from the I extension, becoming two standalone extensions: Zicsr and Zifencei.

The solution is to add _zicsr and/or _zifencei to the -march option, e.g. -march=rv32imac becomes -march=rv32imac_zicsr_zifencei.

In Eclipse, until the GUI will be updated, select the Toolchain Default for Architecture and enter the new string separately as Other target flags.

newlib-nano

Support for newlib-nano is available using the --specs=nano.specs option. For better results, this option must be added to both compile and link time.

nosys.specs

If no syscalls are needed, --specs=nosys.specs can be used at link time to provide empty implementations for the POSIX system calls.

-mcmodel=medany

The libraries are compiled with -O2 -mcmodel=medany. The nano version is compiled with -Os -mcmodel=medany.

Python

Support for Python scripting was added to GDB. This distribution provides a separate binary, riscv-none-elf-gdb-py3 with support for Python 3.11.4.

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.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • [#22] due to a an issue in the build scripts, the riscv-none-elf-gdb was built without ELF support (the Windows binaries are ok); will be fixed soon
  • due to the large number of libraries, the archive is >500 MB.

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.

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:

54150de972a3e28dee14fc341f5c46f3d25654ac66a23e8e295f68ec8171648a
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

65d50dd2a87f4fd707d4859d4278a8eb01a6bfbba59ed07b5fbf7051a19ae4db
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

e2a93406ab874a78d012a13513d767824849b455ef7b5981c0fe2451be609ce4
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

6dfb0390838ea37beab031d426e56ca707f0e7b3ec7fea987e4c1ff748b6d3f1
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

0a7f71150e7b284a01ef739a17a32bafce5db43c012d734d57be5a8c2e2b57b6
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

58f3274a990815b87a29e64560dc57c192f9a45b1effc1106f607a50b7f6ccf0
xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-12.3.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

32-bit support

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

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 mid-2024 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.