GCC 4.9.4 Cross Compiler Build (limits.h issue) - gcc

Question

Basic steps leading up to the question:
cd linux-2.6.35.9/
make ARCH=x86 INSTALL_HDR_PATH=${PREFIX}/${TARGET} headers_install
cd ../
cd build-binutils/
sh ../binutils-2.28/configure --prefix=${PREFIX} --target=${TARGET}
make
make install
cd ../
cd build-gcc/
sh ../gcc-4.9.4/configure --prefix=${PREFIX} --target=${TARGET} --enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-multilib
make all-gcc
make install-gcc
cd ../
The problem that I am running into is that what ends up getting installed into ${PREFIX}/lib/gcc/${TARGET}/4.9.4/include-fixed/limits.h doesn't seem to be correct. Specifically, the "fixincludes" bit in building and installing GCC is expecting some directory called "sys-include" that was never put into place and when it's not, the aforementioned limits.h doesn't reference the associated syslimits.h (in the same directory).
If I look in the output of the build/install sequence there's a reference to building this file from components limitx.h, limity.h, and some other bits. This test fails and it just installs the "generic" limits.h that came with GCC (that doesn't include a reference to syslimits.h which uses GCC's #include_next directive to include ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/include/limits.h that has actual stuff in it I need like NAME_MAX and PATH_MAX).
The bit that is missing from the file is:
/* This administrivia gets added to the beginning of limits.h
if the system has its own version of limits.h. */
/* We use _GCC_LIMITS_H_ because we want this not to match
any macros that the system's limits.h uses for its own purposes. */
#ifndef _GCC_LIMITS_H_ /* Terminated in limity.h. */
#define _GCC_LIMITS_H_
#ifndef _LIBC_LIMITS_H_
/* Use "..." so that we find syslimits.h only in this same directory. */
#include "syslimits.h"
#endif
So is there an option I'm not passing to GCC's configuration script or that I am not passing to something ahead of this step that would create the sys-include directory properly?
[EDIT]
TARGET=i686-redhat-linux (a target triple from "gcc -dumpmachine" on a build server we use for the project)
Possibly more helpful information(?): The packages were simply "wget" pulls from respective archives. I am building on an up-to-date Ubuntu 16.04 installation where I installed libgmp-dev and libmpfr-dev to avoid having to compile them with the compiler source code.

Answer 1

After more digging and trial-and-error I matched up some stuff I started with How to Build a GCC Cross-Compiler with information about an apparently deprecated option --with-headers for configuring GCC. (--with-headers=${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/include/linux) That worked but when I built the compiler support library it complained about missing bits/stdio_lim.h. I found another post here that talks about this problem (you have to go up in the thread a bit) and had mentioned the touching gnu/stubs.h thing from the first page I mentioned.
Added from my own comment below to note that you have to remove the ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/sys-include directory that gets build after the make install-gcc step or else your normal C headers are going to conflict with the Linux Kernel-specific headers that get included in the search path by default.
Suffice it to say that, after applying a patch to the older Glibc I was using (2.11.3) the entire sequence ends up something like this:
export TARGET=i686-redhat-linux
export PREFIX=$(pwd)/output
export PATH=${PATH}:${PREFIX}/bin
mkdir build-binutils
mkdir build-gcc
mkdir build-glibc
cd linux-2.6.35.9/
make ARCH=x86 INSTALL_HDR_PATH=${PREFIX}/${TARGET} headers_install
cd ../
cd build-binutils/
sh ../binutils-2.28/configure --prefix=${PREFIX} --target=${TARGET}
make
make install
cd ../
cd build-gcc/
sh ../gcc-4.9.4/configure --prefix=${PREFIX} --target=${TARGET} --enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-multilib --with-headers=${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/include/linux
make all-gcc
make install-gcc
cd ../
rm --recursive --force ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/sys-include
cd build-glibc/
sh ../glibc-2.11.3/configure --prefix=${PREFIX}/${TARGET} --build=$(gcc -dumpmachine) --host=${TARGET} --target=${TARGET} --disable-multilib libc_cv_forced_unwind=yes libc_cv_c_cleanup=yes
make install-bootstrap-headers=yes install-headers
make csu/subdir_lib
install csu/crt1.o csu/crti.o csu/crtn.o ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/lib
${TARGET}-gcc -nostdlib -nostartfiles -shared -x c /dev/null -o ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/lib/libc.so
touch ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/include/gnu/stubs.h ${PREFIX}/${TARGET}/include/bits/stdio_lim.h
cd ../
cd build-gcc/
make all-target-libgcc
make install-target-libgcc
cd ../
cd build-glibc/
make
make install
cd ../
I don't see any pages that actually go to this depth (maybe the Preshing on Programming page isn't actually totally correct?) but I am going to test this configuration and make sure the software builds completely for the target without problems. (I did test NAME_MAX from limits.h in a file and it seemed to work just fine and dandy.)
I also don't really know that I need to put in the --disable-multilib thing but that seems to be what other pages are doing. That chain in the GCC mailing list talks about using --with-newlib or --disable-shared as options but people on the thread could not agree either of those were the correct solution.
If anyone has better insight into this I sure would appreciate a less hacky, more official solution to the problem.
In case anyone was wondering, the patch (there are two) to fix Glibc 2.11.3 was one custom fix for the configure script to work with GNU Make 4+:
sed -i 's/\(3.79\)/4.* | \1/' glibc-2.11.3/configure
... and an actual patch to two files in the library to fix i686 suport:
patch glibc-2.11.3/nptl/sysdeps/pthread/pt-initfini.c <<__EOF__
## -45,6 +45,11 ##
/* Embed an #include to pull in the alignment and .end directives. */
asm ("\n#include \"defs.h\"");
+asm ("\n#if defined __i686 && defined __ASSEMBLER__");
+asm ("\n#undef __i686");
+asm ("\n#define __i686 __i686");
+asm ("\n#endif");
+
/* The initial common code ends here. */
asm ("\n/*#HEADER_ENDS*/");
__EOF__
patch glibc-2.11.3/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/sysdep.h <<__EOF__
## -29,6 +29,10 ##
#include <dl-sysdep.h>
#include <tls.h>
+#if defined __i686 && defined __ASSEMBLER__
+#undef __i686
+#define __i686 __i686
+#endif
/* For Linux we can use the system call table in the header file
/usr/include/asm/unistd.h
__EOF__
I got that last patch from here.