Installation instructions for GCC & Co. MMIX tools


Latest changes:


Things work for the GCC C and C++ test-suites and "hello, world" programs. If you want to run TeX in the MMIX simulator, you may need to wait a couple of weeks^Wyears. ;-)

This setup has been tested on a i686-pc-linux-gnu (GNU/Linux) and a x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu system, but there should be no problems for other UNIX-type systems, possibly including Cygwin and MinGW systems, although you may need to install some GNU development tool programs like bison and use GNU make instead of your existing make program. An existing installation of GCC is required, for compiling everything from source.

How to install the GNU compiler tools, so you can compile and run C and C++ programs for MMIX:

  1. If you haven't already done so, make sure that you have in your $PATH the mmix simulator from the MMIXware tools. Do not use a version marked earlier than "13 January 2002". I have had no problem with the version marked "15 June 2002"; any later release probably works too. You need to have the programs ctangle and cweave from the cweb package installed, before you compile the MMIXware tools. Note that the mmixal assembler is not used by the GNU tools. Actually, the mmix simulator isn't used either except when running the test-suite but without it, the output of the compiler tools isn't very usable.

  2. If you want to help with development, make sure you have the test-suite-tools installed as described in the FAQ and CVS instructions on the GCC web. I'm not sure which of the tools you can skip if you just want to just use it (as opposed to help developing the tools), except that DejaGNU is then definitely not needed.

  3. Do one of the following. Unless you want to help with development of GCC, binutils or newlib, please use the first alternative and official, pristine, released sources.

    Caution: do not ever use relative paths (../dir), always use absolute paths (/path/to/dir).

  4. If you encounter problems of any kind, during installation or use (not strictly solved by debugging your program :-) please report them using the respective bug-tracking tool for GCC or Binutils and Newlib. Put hp at (either of, corresponding to the tool domain) gcc.gnu.org (or) sourceware.org in the CC field, to get my attention.

  5. If you want to help with development of GCC and the other GNU tools for MMIX, install DejaGNU, of at least version 1.4.4 (see GNU mirrors). With that in place, the simulator test how-to instructions with RUNTESTFLAGS=--target_board=mmixware-sim apply for testing changes. Be sure to follow mailing lists for GCC development and please contribute improvements as per GCC contribution instructions. Similarly for MMIX binutils and newlib improvements.


By H-P
Latest update: 2011-02-13