How to test binutils?

Nick Clifton nickc@redhat.com
Wed May 5 17:30:00 GMT 2004


Hi Houda,

>Thank you very much for your answer Nick, 
>Do i have to write all this files before testing any
>one?
>  
>
Yes.  You can test to see if an individual file will just compile 
without needing the other files, but in order to build any of the 
binutils (gas, ld, objdump, etc)  you are going to need all of these 
files.  Oh and you will probably need to create an include/elf/<name.h> 
file as well.

The good news is that you can use the existing files in these 
directories as examples of how to create the new files.  Simply choose a 
port that you think is quite similar to your own (same size 
instructions, similar endian-ness, etc) and look to see what files were 
created for that port and what they contain.

>I want to know if there is the only method for
>testing?
>So, I can not for example just making a makefile.
>Can i test without building cross-target? 
>  
>

Sorry no.  The makefiles are automatically generated by the configure 
scripts.  So you need to run configure (and hence attempt to build a 
cross-targeted toolchain) in order to create the makefiles.  You can 
break this down however.  For example you do not need to create the 
files in ld/ in order to build GAS.  Similarly you do not need the files 
in gas/ in order to build the linker.  You will need the files in bfd/ 
opcodes/ and include/elf though for both the assembler, the linker and 
the other binary utilities.

Cheers
  Nick



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