This page describes a script I've cobbled together from various sources, that allows me to build a cross-compiling toolchain (binutils, gcc, glibc) that are NPTL (Native Posix Threading Library) capable, running on Fedora Core 3.

This is mostly a staging area until I take a look at crosstool and see how this can be integrate there. Hopefully, I'll actually get around to doing that!

Some caveats:

• I've only run this on Fedora Core 3. It should work elsewhere, but it's not tested.
• I've used hard-coded binutils/gcc/glibc versions. It certainly won't work out of the box for other combinations, because it only has patches for this specific combination. crosstool contains a repository of useful patches. Hopefully, I'll get around to looking at how to integrate this into crosstool one day.
• The resultant PPC toolchain has been used to build simple pthreads test applications, and these do run on real hardware (a MontaVista 3.1 system, where I replaced the provided glibc with the one built here, and ran the test app). The x86 toolchain has not been tested at all.

To use this, create a working directory (same ~/nptltool). Put all the scripts from the list below in a sub-directory of that directory named "downloads". Then, make sure you have downloaded the source to binutils, glibc, gcc & the kernel into downloads. Finally, read and then run nptl_build.sh, and wait.

Files you can download from here:

• nptl_build.sh
• patch-glibc-2.3.3-for-gcc-3.4.x.patch
• patch-glibc-2.3.3-for-gcc-3.4.x.txt

Files you'll need to download from elsewhere:

• binutils-2.15.tar.gz
• config-i686-unknown-linux-gnu (a .config file for the kernel)
• config-powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu (a .config file for the kernel)
• gcc-3.4.3.tar.bz2
• glibc-2.3.3.tar.bz2
• glibc-linuxthreads-2.3.3.tar.bz2
• linux-2.6.11.tar.bz2