Building rx-elf toolchain on Mac OS

If you google around, there are some guides on building gcc for RX, but none of them is really concise. So here you go.

With this method I was able to compile a toolchain for RX on Mac OS 10.8.2.

Credits

This post for Linux on the Renesas forums basically includes everything mentioned here, but with a lot of overhead and not very well formatted, however head there if you want some more explanations on the options used. Also thanks to Andy K. who helped me troubleshooting.

Download sources and create working directories

Download and extract the following sources. (In brackets is the version I used for this, other versions will probably work as well.)

binutils (2.23.2)
gcc (4.7.3)
newlib (2.0.0)
gmp (5.1.1)
mpfr (3.1.2)
mpc (1.0)

For every tool, create a build directory named rx-xxx. After that you should have a directory structure like this:

~/Desktop/rx-elf/
    binutils-x.x.x/
    gcc-x.x.x/
    gmp-x.x.x/
    mpc-x.x/
    mpfr-x.x.x/
    newlib-x.x.x/
    rx-binutils/
    rx-gcc/
    rx-gmp/
    rx-mpc/
    rx-mpfr/
    rx-newlib/

General build remarks

For $MYPREFIX I used /usr/local/rx-elf, but use whatever suits yourself. This is where the finished builds will be installed.
I use make -j4 instead of a simple make to speed up making on a multicore / hyperthreaded CPU (which most Macs have).
If you don't have gcc to start with, check out this guide on installing gcc on Mac OS.

Build binutils

cd rx-binutils
../binutils-x.x.x/configure --prefix=$MYPREFIX --target=rx-elf
make -j4
make install

Build GMP

cd rx-gmp
../gmp-x.x.x/configure --prefix=$MYPREFIX --disable-werror
make
make install

Build MPFR

cd rx-mpfr
../mpfr-x.x.x/configure --disable-shared --with-gmp=$MYPREFIX --prefix=$MYPREFIX
make
make install

Build MPC

cd rx-mpc
../mpc-x.x.x/configure --disable-shared --with-gmp=$MYPREFIX --with-mpfr=$MYPREFIX --prefix=$MYPREFIX
make
make install

Build gcc (as much as possible)

cd rx-gcc
../gcc-x.x.x/configure --prefix=$MYPREFIX --target=rx-elf --enable-languages=c,c++ --with-newlib --with-gmp=$MYPREFIX --with-mpfr=$MYPREFIX --with-mpc=$MYPREFIX
make -j4
make install

Make will stop with an error at some point, this is expected as we haven't built newlib yet.

For subsequent Makes we need parts already built, so if your $MYPREFIX isn't inside your $PATH, you should do something like this now:

export PATH = $MYPREFIX:$PATH
(e.g. export PATH = /usr/local/rx-elf:$PATH)

Build newlib

You might need to apply this patch to newlib before building. For me the patch didn't work out of the box, so I just edited the mentioned file manually. It's only one line that's changed anyway.

After that, do:

cd rx-newlib
../newlib-x.x/configure --prefix=$MYPREFIX --target=rx-elf --enable-languages=c,c++ --with-newlib
make -j4
make install

Build the rest of gcc

The guide mentioned at the top just tells to re-start making of gcc, however this didn't work for me. I started building gcc from scratch, so:

rm -rf rx-gcc
mkdir rx-gcc; cd rx-gcc
../gcc-x.x.x/configure --prefix=$MYPREFIX --target=rx-elf --enable-languages=c,c++ --with-newlib --with-gmp=$MYPREFIX --with-mpfr=$MYPREFIX --with-mpc=$MYPREFIX
make -j4
make install

And that's it! Sometimes make would fail for me at some point, but work as expected if started again.

What else

If you happen to have the GR-Sakura board, head over to Andy's repo for some test code and Makefile.

If you experienced any difficulties, please tell me so I can amend this guide.

graup/rx-elf-gcc-guide-mac.md