Which gcc version for MIPS?

Which gcc version for MIPS?

[Günter Dannoritzer]

Hi,

I am trying to get my feed wet with the MIPS architecture and I am
looking into getting the gcc cross compiler going on my openSuse 10.2
system.

On openSuse there is already a binutils 2.17 package available and I was
wondering whether it is as simple as compiling gcc with MIPS support for
that binutils package?

I looked at the Toolchain page at

  http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Toolchains

and it explains the compilation of gcc fairly simple. On the page it
says to use gcc 3.4.4 as that seems to be the version that allows to
compile a Linux Kernel without problems, however, if I look at the
crosstools page of Dan Kegel

 http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.43/buildlogs/

it shows that there is no version that compiles a listed Linux Kernel
successful.

Can anybody give me some help in deciding what gcc version to use?

Does the gcc version need to match a certain binutils version?

Another question I have about having a mips and mipsel toolchain. I am
aware that some MIPS procecessors can change the endian-ness. In the gcc
documentation I saw that there is a -EB and -EL switch to select the
endianes. What is then the reason to have two toolchains?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Guenter

Re: Which gcc version for MIPS?

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

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On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Günter Dannoritzer wrote:

> Can anybody give me some help in deciding what gcc version to use?

 Well, hard to tell probably: 3.4 used to be fairly stable, 4.0 -- less 
so, 4.1 -- I am happy with it, but your mileage may vary, 4.2 -- I have 
not tried.  Others may have differing opinions.

> Does the gcc version need to match a certain binutils version?

 For binutils your best choice is probably sticking with the most recent 
release.  As of this writing it is 2.18.

> Another question I have about having a mips and mipsel toolchain. I am
> aware that some MIPS procecessors can change the endian-ness. In the gcc
> documentation I saw that there is a -EB and -EL switch to select the
> endianes. What is then the reason to have two toolchains?

 Well, it is a choice from two and you can have only one default.  You 
would usually want to have the default set to the endianness you most 
frequently use, so that you do not have to specify the switch; obviously 
the same applies to a native MIPS/Linux toolchain.  Besides, historically 
there used to be some bugs in the compiler's specs that made the selection 
of the non-default endianness problematic at times.  They should have been 
fixed by now though.

  Maciej