Version 13.2.0-2 is a maintenance release; it fixes the linker path issue on Linux.

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

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 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 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@13.2.0-2.1 --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 13.2.0 from July 27, 2023;
  • binutils version 2.41 from July 30, 2023.

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 Intel Linux; it can be enabled via the -m32 compile option.

Changes

Compared to the upstream, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • [#8] due to an error in the binutils build script, in certain conditions, on Linux, the linker complained about a dependency to libpthread.so and/or libm.so; fixed.

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • none

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:

93c12d96c3a0884328b47a36082510a6dc8d0e5a31c2e6a68d92d6f49119b929
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

d2c183ce8157772d459400680955b972cd1d0d70f3971f59f07bf60634565920
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-darwin-x64.tar.gz

0808821e1d0b50c7dc32b17faf162cfbb5d7d934db3e35d55a425627eb78ec1d
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-linux-arm.tar.gz

621ea366680d17d278f7a1f0041765672ca5b72c6a5446cff6d6c242d1eb6da8
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-linux-arm64.tar.gz

026fd0cddf66bec8f83f7231204ac0642727cb1bc0cfc6ea44acac01e1639e88
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-linux-x64.tar.gz

e83b37dbc88c8d2db7046e8945b82ec74cd5087faefe6a3f5957e64a1de5e635
xpack-gcc-13.2.0-2-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

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 Intel Linux and Intel Windows was dropped in 2022.

Pre-deprecation notice for 32-bit Arm Linux

Due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems, support for 32-bit Arm 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 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.