How to test GCC on a simulator

Suppose you want to test GCC on some strange target, for which you don't have hardware. Let's pick d30v as an example. You can do it like this:

Create a combined tree.

I'm assuming you're starting from scratch, so you don't have an installed binutils or newlib for the strange target. So you'll need to build these. You can't easily build newlib outside a combined tree. Start in an empty directory, then do this:

mkdir gcc src combined
cd gcc
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@gcc.gnu.org:/cvs/gcc co gcc-full
cd ../src
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.cygnus.com:/cvs/src co binutils newlib dejagnu gdb
cd src
find . -print | cpio -pdlm ../../combined
cd ../../gcc/gcc
find . -print | cpio -pdlmu ../../combined
cd ../..

This will create, in `combined', a tree which consists of all the files from the gcc and binutils/gdb/newlib source trees, with the gcc files overriding the binutils/gdb/newlib files when there's a conflict. (It's done this way because the gcc files are the master copy.) To save on disk space, the commands above actually make a tree of hard links, rather than duplicating all the files.

Build it.

The target name suitable for the simulator is usually `*-elf' for a target `*'. There are some exceptions, for instance on powerpc it's powerpc-eabi or powerpc-eabisim, and for i960 there isn't an elf target yet so i960-coff is probably your best choice.

mkdir build install
cd build
../combined/configure --target=d30v-elf --prefix=`pwd`/../install
make

Test it.

The only trick here is that you want dejagnu to use the simulator, not try running the output on the build system. For example:

make check-gcc RUNTESTFLAGS=--target_board=d30v-sim

The only reliable way (apart from guessing that it's probably `*-sim') to find out the name of the target board is to look in the dejagnu sources, in dejagnu/baseboards, for something that looks right. Or you can use this table of combinations that at one time /NEVER/ compiled and were /NOT/ usable as test-targets with the instructions above: