1 These are the GNU binutils. These are utilities of use when dealing
4 The linker (ld) is in a separate directory, which should be ../ld.
5 Linker-specific notes are in ../ld/README.
7 As of version 2.5, the assembler (as) is also included in this package, in
8 ../gas. Assembler-specific notes can be found in ../gas/README.
10 Recent changes are in ./NEWS, ../ld/NEWS, and ../gas/NEWS.
12 Unpacking and Installation -- quick overview
13 ============================================
15 When you unpack the binutils-2.9.tar.gz file, you'll get a directory
16 called something like `binutils-2.9', which contains various files and
17 directories. Most of the files in the top directory are for
18 information and for configuration. The actual source code is in
21 To build binutils, you can just do:
26 make install # copies the programs files into /usr/local/bin
29 This will configure and build all the libraries as well as the
30 assembler, the binutils, and the linker.
32 If you have GNU make, we recommend building in a different directory:
36 ../binutils-2.9/configure [options]
40 This relies on the VPATH feature of GNU make.
42 By default, the binutils will be configured to support the system on
43 which they are built. When doing cross development, use the --target
44 configure option to specify a different target.
46 The --enable-targets option adds support for more binary file formats
47 besides the default. List them as the argument to --enable-targets,
48 separated by commas. For example:
50 ./configure --enable-targets=sun3,rs6000-aix,decstation
52 The name 'all' compiles in support for all valid BFD targets (this was
53 the default in releases before 2.3):
55 ./configure --enable-targets=all
57 You can also specify the --enable-shared option when you run
58 configure. This will build the BFD and opcodes libraries as shared
59 libraries. You can use arguments with the --enable-shared option to
60 indicate that only certain libraries should be built shared; for
61 example, --enable-shared=bfd. The only potential shared libraries in
62 a binutils release are bfd and opcodes.
64 The binutils will be linked against the shared libraries. The build
65 step will attempt to place the correct library in the runtime search
66 path for the binaries. However, in some cases, after you install the
67 binaries, you may have to set an environment variable, normally
68 LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so that the system can find the installed libbfd
71 To build under openVMS/AXP, see the file makefile.vms in the top level
77 If your system does not already have an ar program, the normal
78 binutils build process will not work. In this case, run configure as
79 usual. Before running make, run this script:
83 ${MAKE} $* AR=true all-libiberty
84 ${MAKE} $* AR=true all-bfd
86 ${MAKE} $* ADDL_DEPS='$(BULIBS)' ADDL_LIBS='$(BULIBS) ../bfd/*.o `cat ../libiberty/required-list ../libiberty/needed-list | sed -e "s,\([^ ][^ ]*\),../libiberty/\1,g"`' ar
88 This script will build an ar program in binutils/ar. Move binutils/ar
89 into a directory on your PATH. After doing this, you can run make as
90 usual to build the complete binutils distribution. You do not need
91 the ranlib program in order to build the distribution.
96 Binutils-2.9 supports many different architectures, but there
97 are many more not supported, including some that were supported
98 by earlier versions. We are hoping for volunteers to
99 improve this situation.
101 The major effort in porting binutils to a new host and/or target
102 architecture involves the BFD library. There is some documentation
103 in ../bfd/doc. The file ../gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo (distributed
104 with gdb-4.x) may also be of help.
109 Send bug reports and patches to bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org. Always mention
110 the version number you are running; this is printed by running any of
111 the binutils with the --version option. We appreciate reports about
112 bugs, but we do not promise to fix them.
117 Testing this release of the binutils requires an unreleased version of
118 dejagnu. There is a dejagnu snapshot available at
119 ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/binutils
120 which may be used for testing.
125 The configure and Makefile.in files in the subdirectories are
126 generated by autoconf and automake, respectively. The libtool package
127 is also required. In order to make the generation rules fire
128 automatically, you must configure with the --enable-maintainer-mode
129 option. This option is not the default in order to avoid problems on
130 systems which have out of date versions of autoconf or automake
131 installed. The generated files in this release were built with
132 unreleased versions of autoconf, automake, and libtool. You can find
133 snapshots of the appropriate sources at
134 ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/binutils