Cross-compiling Linux kernel for ARM on Windows using Sourcery Toolchain - linux-kernel

I am trying to cross-compile a Linux kernel for an ARM-target (Freescale i.Mx28) on a Windows host. I know that this approach is not the best one compared to using a Linux host, but unfortunately it's not up to me to decide that.
The restrictions are:
The kernel has to be the one provided by Freescale (L2.6.35_MX28_SDK_10.12)
It must be build using Sourcery Toolchain and CodeBench
The whole thing must be done on Windows
I got that far, that I worked around the missing case sensitivity on Windows so that I can extract the kernel sources using Cygwin. But now I got problems with the kernel Makefile. I think there are some issues with the Windows paths as I get the error message *** multiple target patterns. Stop., which comes from the : in paths and other errors concerning the dependency check when configuring:
HOSTCC scripts/basic/fixdep
/usr/bin/sh: scripts/basic/fixdep: cannot execute binary file
make[1]: *** [scripts/basic/fixdep] Error 126
make: *** [scripts_basic] Error 2
Is there a way to port the Makefile without having to rewrite it or is there another way to build the kernel without using the given Makefile? Can I use the sourcery toolchain or IDE to handle the Makefile?
Is there a way to build the kernel within the given restrictions?

To cross compile the kernel, you'll need two compilers: One that is able to build tools that run in your build environment, and one that can create executables for your target.
It seems like you aren't really cross compiling but you have just replaced your compiler. You are now building tools required for the build for ARM and try to run them on Windows.
You can specify which cross compiler to use:
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=your-compiler-prefix- ...
You might also have a problem with the filesystem. The filesystem in Windows is case-insensitive and the Kernel build might create files where the case matters. To get support for a case-insensitive filesystem on Windows, you can have a look at Windows Services for UNIX.

Use another toolchain! CodeBench is NOT compatible with building Linux on Windows hosts, not matter what eye candy (lies) they put on their website about using CYGPATH, etc.
I have tried this myself for weeks, and the problem is that CodeBench accepts POSIX paths, but insists outputting Win32 paths that are hard, if not impossible, to control in the Linux Kernel Make procedures.
I'm not saying it is impossible; I'm sure it is possible. But it is not worth the time, no matter what your boss tells you. There are more problems to consider. Another problem is that the tools in the Linux sources ./scripts directory are not directly compatible with the Windows environment and thus, although they might compile they don't run as expected. They need to be patched!
The best chance you have, is by compiling your own cross-compiler with Cygwin. Or find one already cooked for you.

Related

How to run a C program in android-x86 terminal?

I have to C program which is compiled using gcc in ubuntu. I want to run that executable in android terminal. When i run it is showing either "file or directory is not found" or "not executable:ELF32".
I want to run the code in android terminal. Is there any way or flags in gcc or using any other compiler so that i can run my code in the android terminal.?
Android does not use the same system libraries as Ubuntu, so they will not be found.
There are two solutions:
Copy the libraries you need.
If you can place them in the same filesystem locations they have in Ubuntu then great, otherwise you'll need to run the ld-linux.so manually and tell it where to find the libraries. Or, you could relink the program such that it expects to find the dynamic linker and libraries in a non-standard place. You might also use a chroot, but that requires root, and you'd need to find a chroot binary that works.
Use a static link.
This usually just means passing -static to GCC. You get a much larger binary that should be entirely self-contained, with no dependencies. It requires that static versions of all your libraries are available on your build system. Also, some features (such as DNS lookup) always expect a shared library, so they won't work this way.
Even then, you should expect some Linux features to not work. Basically, anything that requires hardware features or configuration files in /etc are going to need a lot of effort. There are various projects that have done this already (search "linux chroot android").
I'm not sure what the "not executable:ELF32" message means, but you should check whether you're building 32 or 64-bit executables, and which the Android binaries are using (file <whatever> should tell you).

How to cross compile from Mac to Linux?

I wrote a little game using Rust, and I used cargo build --release to compile a release version on Mac.
I tried to share this with my friend who is using Ubuntu, but when he tried to run the binary, he got the following error:
cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
I searched for this but found no answers. Doesn't Rust claim to have "no runtime"? Shouldn't it be able to run anywhere in binary form?
Rust not having a runtime means that it doesn't have a lot of code running as part of the language (for example a garbage collector or bytecode interpreter). It does still need to use operating system primitives (i.e. syscalls), and these are different on MacOS and Linux.
What you want is a cross compiler. If you're using rustup, then installing a cross compiler should be simple:
# Install the toolchain to build Linux x86_64 binaries
rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Then building is:
cargo build --release --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Caveat: I don't have an OS X machine to test this on; please comment or edit to fix this if it works!
Well, it is because Rust has no runtime (unlike e.g. Java's JVM) that you can't just compile code on one OS and expect it to run on a different one; what you are looking for is cross-compilation. I haven't done it in Rust, but from what I can gather you can find relevant information on different cross-compilation Rust strategies on this GitHub repo.

compile simple hello-world c program for mips netbsd

the last week I have been trying to set-up a compiler which can compile to netbsd with mips architecture.
I cannot find anything on the internet how to do this. All documents refer to compiling the kernel to the architecture but not programs.
How can this be so hard....
host is netbsd amd64 machine
Set the compiler appropriately. Point it at the version of gcc in your TOOLDIR. In this case, something like mips--netbsd-gcc. Definitely make sure TOOLDIR is on your path, so the driver can find the proper assembler, proper loader, and proper libraries.
Take a look at the Makefile in any of src/bin/* as an example, and read through the system mk include files referenced (in src/share/mk)
Generally speaking, the goal is to have a working cross-compiler and a filesystem root for the target, all installed on your development machine. The target root is needed since you need all sorts of libraries to build userland applications. Those libraries need to be compiled for the target, not for the host.
Assuming you build everything from source, it goes as follows:
Choose a prefix for the toolchain (say /opt/mips) and another prefix for the root filesystem of the target (say /opt/target). All of those are on your development machine, not on the target!
Configure, build and install the cross-compiler for your target. This goes into the toolchain prefix.
Configure, build and install the kernel for your target, into the target root prefix. This should install the necessary kernel development headers needed later. If you can install such headers without compiling the kernel, more power to you, of course.
Configure, build and install the C library (say glibc) for your target, into the target root.
Configure, build and install whatever other libraries your userland application needs - into the target root.
Finally, configure, build and install the userland application. Once installed into the target root, you can copy it over to the target into the same prefix (say /opt/target as suggested before).
Generally to install into a different prefix - one that overlaps stuff on your build host (like /usr) - you'd need to do some tricks to fool make install into seeing the target prefix instead of your own. A simple approach would be to have a chroot environment on your build host, where you can bind-mount the prefix (say /usr) read-only, with a writable (mount_union) overlay on top of it.
When you build stuff for the target, you need to pass proper arguments to configure, of course.

How do I create an executable file with OpenCOBOL?

Upon finishing a COBOL program, how do I compile it into an executable file that may be run on other PCs? I'm using OpenCOBOL via cygwin.
Check out this getting started page from the user manual for OpenCOBOL:
But in case the link is broken, just do this:
$ cobc -x hello.cob
$ ./hello
cobc is the compiler. hello.cob is the source file. The output is simply the file hello which can be run by calling ./hello. The -x option is necessary to build an executable.
However, with all compiled programs, it is compiled for the machine is was built on. It will work on machine with similar architectures, but you don't true cross-platform ability unless you're using an interpreted language like Python or Java.
If you compile with Cygwin, the target computers also need Cygwin, or in particular the cygwin dynamic libraries along with the OpenCOBOL runtimes.
Many times, you can also compile under MinGW, which lessens the dependencies, but also lessens the available POSIX features.
Easiest path, install OpenCOBOL and Cygwin on the target machines, and you'll be good to go, otherwise you'll need to produce release packages with all the dependencies and instructions for PATH settings.

Executable file generated using GCC under cygwin

I am using Cygwin and have GCC (version 4.3.4 20090804 (release) 1 ) installed as Cygwin package.
When I built C code using GCC under Cygwin shell, the generated executable output file is a executable of type (PE32 executable for MS Windows (console) Intel 80386 32-bit) and it can only be executed/run under Cygwin shell, not as standalone .exe on Windows shell/command prompt. If I try to run it standalone on Windows command prompt it gives an error window saying "The program can't run because cygwin.dll is missing from your computer".
How can one make this .exe standalone, which can be executed on a command prompt of any other system or even in my own system?
I thought GCC under Cygwin would build a Linux executable (ELF 32-bit LSB executable), but it's not so. How can I use the gcc-cygwin combination to generate a *.out kind of Linux executable file?
Also, I cannot run a Linux executable generated on a Linux-gcc combination to execute under Cygwin.
Any pointers would be helpful.
Despite widespread rumours, Cygwin is not a Linux emulator, i.e. it doesn't produce or run Linux executables. For that you'll need a virtual machine or coLinux.
Instead, Cygwin is a compatibility layer, which aims to implement as much as possible of the POSIX and Linux APIs within Windows. This means that programs have to be compiled specifically for Cygwin, but it also means that it's better integrated with Windows, e.g. it lets you mix POSIX and Windows APIs in the same program.
It's the cygwin1.dll that provides that compatibility layer. If you build non-Cygwin executables using gcc-3's -mno-cygwin switch or one of the MinGW compilers, then of course you can't use any POSIX/Linux-specific APIs, and any such calls will need to be replaced with Windows equivalents.
Cygwin is an emulation layer. It allows UNIX code to run on Windows, if you compile it to use the emulation layer. To Windows it looks like any normal DLL and makes OS calls as normal. But when you compile against it, it shows the same functions as UNIX (well, POSIX technically, but UNIX it is)
1) When you build with cygwin, it automatically brings in this cygwin1.dll. This is the code that you need to make it look like UNIX. There are flags to make it not use this cygwin dll, meaning ignore the UNIX stuff and use native Windows calls. the -mno-cygwin flag will make the binary a native Windows binary, not using cygwin emulation. As others have said, you also need the -mwindows to make actual GUI apps using cygwin gcc.
2) To compile on one platform to run on another platform, you need what's called a cross compiler. You also need the libraries and headers for the other system. For what you want you'd need a cygwin-Linux cross compiler, Linux headers and libraries. It would probably be much easier to run Linux in a virtual machine than to set this up.
3) Remember that Cygwin just looks like UNIX to UNIX source code, not to Linux binaries. Once you compile things, the function calls are windows DLL calls. A cygwin program is still a Windows program (which is why you need a Windows style DLL to run it). Cygwin provides code for UNIX functions/system calls such as fork(), but even the method of calling them is now different. fork() now calls into a Windows DLL, not into a Linux kernel. It's still a very different system.
Not a complete answer, but I think I am able to give some pointers.
1) http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/programming.html says you should use -mswindows parameter. Take a look of MinGW.
2) You need a cross gcc to do this. By default cygwin gcc produces binaries linked against cygwin.dll.
3) That it because it is a linux binary. Easiest way is to recompile software in cygwin.
ad 1) There are currently three different mingw cross-compilers available for cygwin:
The old gcc3 -mno-cygwin is deprecated.
There are new mingw64 cross-compilers for 32 bit (mingw64-i686-gcc) and 64 bit windows targets (mingw64-x86_64-gcc).
There's no mingw-i686-gcc matching the official cygwin gcc4 compiler yet.
ad 2) There's no linux cross-compiler as cygwin package yet available. But people report success building such a cross-compiler by themselves.
ad 3) There's no cygwin cross-compiler as linux package available, but many mingw cross-compilers. Those mingw executables can also be executed under cygwin, though they cannot use cygwin features, just the simple windows runtime.
Correcting errors in others people posts:
-mswindows is not valid, -mwindows tells the linker to generate a GUI app without console.
-mno-cygwin is only valid for the old deprecated gcc3 compiler and is not supported anymore. Don't use it. With cygwin you should use ordinary host and target triples as with every other cross-compiler.
You need to have cygwin.dll in your path.
Or just use MinGW to compile native windows code without dependencies.

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