lfs-book/chapter05/binutils-pass1-inst.xml

<sect2><title>&nbsp;</title><para>&nbsp;</para></sect2>

<sect2>
<title>Installation of Binutils</title>

<para>It is important that Binutils be the first package to get compiled,
because both Glibc and GCC perform various tests on the available linker and
assembler to determine which of their own features to enable.</para>

<note><para>Even though Binutils is an important toolchain package, we are not
going to run the testsuite at this early stage. First, the testsuite framework
is not yet in place and second, the programs from this first pass will soon be
overwritten by those installed in the second pass.</para></note>

<para>This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default
optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if
you have defined any environment variables that override default
optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or
modifying them when building Binutils.</para>

<para>It is recommended by the Binutils installation documentation to build
Binutils outside of the source directory in a dedicated directory:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>mkdir ../binutils-build
cd ../binutils-build</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Next, prepare Binutils to be compiled:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>../binutils-&binutils-version;/configure \
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;--prefix=/tools --disable-nls</userinput></screen></para>

<para>The meaning of the configure switches:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><userinput>--prefix=/tools</userinput>: This tells the
configure script to prepare to install the Binutils programs in the
<filename>/tools</filename> directory.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><userinput>--disable-nls</userinput>: This disables
internationalization (a word often shortened to i18n). We don't need this
for our static programs and <emphasis>nls</emphasis> often causes problems
when linking statically.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>Continue with compiling the package:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make configure-host
make LDFLAGS="-all-static"</userinput></screen></para>

<para>The meaning of the make option:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><userinput>LDFLAGS="-all-static"</userinput>: This tells
the linker that all the Binutils programs should be linked
statically.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>And install the package:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make install</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Now prepare the linker for the "locking in" of Glibc later on:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make -C ld clean
make -C ld LIB_PATH=/tools/lib</userinput></screen></para>

<caution><para>Do not yet remove the Binutils build and source
directories. You will need them again in their current state a bit further on
in this chapter.</para></caution>

</sect2>