setting up OS X 10.9 for i386-elf cross-compilation

gistfile1.sh

# frustratingly, we need to have "real" gcc to build the i386-elf binutils/gcc

brew install gcc

# $PROJECT_HOME should be the parent directory under which you'll download
# everything and build the toolchain

cd $PROJECT_HOME
mkdir toolchain

# set up our environment variables

export PREFIX=$PROJECT_HOME/toolchain
export TARGET=i386-elf
export CC=/usr/local/bin/gcc-4.8
export CXX=/usr/local/bin/g++-4.8
export LD=/usr/local/bin/gcc-4.8
export CFLAGS=-Wno-error=deprecated-declarations

# get binutils source

curl -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.24.tar.gz
tar xvzf binutils-2.24.tar.gz 
cd binutils-2.24

# make binutils (for i386-elf)

./configure --prefix=$PREFIX --target=$TARGET --disable-nls
make
make install

cd ..

# get gcc source

curl -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.9.0/gcc-4.9.0.tar.gz
tar xvzf gcc-4.9.0.tar.gz 
cd gcc-4.9.0

# make gcc (for i386-elf)

./configure --prefix=$PREFIX --target=$TARGET --disable-nls --enable-languages=c --without-headers
make all-gcc
make install-gcc

export PATH=$PREFIX/bin:$PATH

gistfile2.sh

# how to make a grub floppy image

dd if=/dev/zero of=grub.img bs=512 count=2880
cat boot/grub/stage1 boot/grub/stage2 | dd of=grub.img conv=notrunc

For anyone attempting this in the future and curious about runtime (this is just the compiling gcc part):
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008)
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
256GB SSD

It took a little over 60 minutes (gcc 4.9.3).

make -j8 works faster

For anyone who will need to link libgcc, create a subdirectory eg. build in the gcc folder and run ../configure etc.