Building and Installing a Cross-Compiler

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Building and installing a cross-compiler

GNU CC can function as a cross-compiler for many machines, but not all.

- Cross-compilers for the MIPS as target using the MIPS assembler currently do not work, because the auxiliary programs mips-tdump.c and mips-tfile.c cant be compiled on anything but a MIPS. It does work to cross compile for a MIPS if you use the GNU assembler and linker.
- Cross-compilers between machines with different floating point formats have not all been made to work. GNU CC now has a floating point emulator with which these can work, but each target machine description needs to be updated to take advantage of it.
- Cross-compilation between machines of different word sizes is some what problematic and sometimes does not work.

Since GNU CC generates assembler code, you probably need a cross-assembler that GNU CC can run, in order to produce object files. If you want to link on other than the target machine, you need a cross-linker as well. You also need header files and libraries suitable for the target machine that you can install on the host machine.